Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

GREAT YARMOUTH PORT AND HAVEN BILL [Lords]

PORT OF LONDON BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH ARMY

Officers (Pensions)

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for War how much pension is received by a brigadier's widow with three children who lost her husband on 3rd November, 1958; and how much would she receive for herself and her three children if her husband had died the next day, assuming in each case that the husband retired on the 1956 Code after maximum service and that the widow is 50 years of age.

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. J. B. Godber): £448 and £893 a year.

Mr. Johnson: Does my right hon. Friend recall that on 20th December his predecessor said that these pensions were intended to be rewards for service? Ought there not, therefore, to be similar rewards for similar service, and is it not quite wrong that a widow in similar circumstances whose husband retired at the same time, with the same service and in the same rank, should receive about half the pension of a widow whose husband died one day later? Will not my right hon. Friend consult the other Service Ministers and the Minister of Defence to see whether something can be done to remedy this unjust state of affairs?

Mr. Godber: This matter has been referred to on a number of occasions recently in the House. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence said, in answer to a Question from my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) the other day, that he was looking into the whole question. I cannot go beyond that.

Adventure Training

Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux: asked the Secretary of State for War if he will revise the present regulations concerning adventure training so far as they affect members of the Women's Royal Army Corps.

Mr. Godber: The extent to which members of the Women's Royal Army Corps take part in adventure training schemes is decided locally in consultation with the senior W.R.A.C. commander. The latest War Office directive on adventure training was issued on 18th June this year. It is, of course, a document which lays down policy: detailed supervision of exercises must remain a command responsibility. I shall consider, after the inquiry into the recent incident has been completed, whether the directive should require further revision.

Lieut.-Colonel J. K. Cordeaux: While not wishing to be a spoilsport or to stop all the girls' fun and games, may I nevertheless ask my right hon. Friend to ensure that members of the W.R.A.C. are not necessarily put in a position where they are in danger of suffering death or capture in a hostile or wild country?

Mr. Godber: It is not a question of fun and games. I assure my hon. and gallant Friend that these are serious exercises carried out for important purposes of morale and experience. I would not, however, wish to say anything further on this matter until I see the report of the inquiry.

Miss Harvie Anderson: Would my right hon. Friend agree that the W.R.A.C. would not wish any special rules or regulations to be made for them or imposed upon them and that they interpret with common sense the regulations made by the C.-in-C. of the area concerned?

Mr. Godber: I am grateful for that comment from my hon. Friend. I fully


endorse what she has said and I consider it important that they should act fully as part of the Services.

Surplus Land

Mr. Webster: asked the Secretary of State for War what steps are taken to ensure that before surplus land is disposed of by his Department the value of the land in the hands of the developer is ascertained.

Mr. Godber: The planning position is ascertained and the land valued by fully qualified professional staff who take into account all prospects of development.

Mr. Webster: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving me some indication of the set procedure. Will he say whether the advice of an outside valuer is taken into account in these matters and whether it is the value in the hand of the developer that is always taken into account?

Mr. Godber: We use our own professional advisers in these matters, but, of course, most of the Army land that is offered is put up for auction. We always consult the auctioneers, and this is one way in which we ensure getting the best value for the land.

Mr. Paget: Is the Minister aware that the land owned by the Army is of enormous value and that for development purposes a great deal of it is being inadequately used? Will he be very careful indeed about how it is disposed of?

Mr. Godber: Yes, I think that is a perfectly fair point, and I did indicate last week that I wanted to look into this. I entirely agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman on that point.

Fork-Lift Tracks

Mr. Dodds: asked the Secretary of State for War if he will arrange for the testing for War Department purposes of an American fork-lift truck and a British fork-lift truck, details of which have been sent to him.

Mr. Godber: The American fork-lift truck referred to was tested in 1961; it is now in service with the Army and is giving a satisfactory performance. I shall be pleased to arrange for tests to be made

of a production model of the British truck.

Mr. Dodds: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the offer which he has made to have the British model tested with the American one will be very gladly received indeed and that his invitation will be accepted? In view of that, I shall not have anything more to say about it at this stage.

Tractor Shovels

Mr. Dodds: asked the Secretary of State for War how many four-wheel-drive tractor shovels have been purchased since 1st January, 1956; what has been the total cost; how many have been purchased from American companies or those with American connections; how many have been purchased from British companies; what was the procedure followed in inviting British firms to tender; and why no invitation was sent to a British firm, the name of which has been sent to him.

Mr. Godber: Since 1st January, 1956, my Department has bought 540 tractor shovels at a total cost of £3·63 million, all of which were manufactured in Britain; 291 of them, at a value of £1·52 million, were purchased from a firm with American connections and 249, at a value of £2·11 million, from firms with no such connections. These tractors were bought partly by single tender and partly by competitive tender. The British firm referred to was not invited to tender because neither of the two models offered by them was considered suitable at the time.

Mr. Dodds: But is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the firm to which he refers is world-famous for this sort of product? Is he not aware that if the models required for military purposes were different from those required for commercial purposes and if this firm had been told what the Army wanted—which it was not—it could have made them in a fraction of the time any of the Americans would have taken? At a time when work is badly needed, is it not essential to give 100 per cent. British firms an opportunity to produce goods for which they are world-famous?

Mr. Godber: Of course we want to buy British equipment wherever we can, but also it is essential that we see that the Army has the best equipment possible. We have to balance these things. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we do look most carefully to British products which come forward.

Mr. Dodds: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the Answer, I give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

Major Cory (Court-Martial)

Mr. Morris: asked the Secretary of State for War when the inquiry by the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for War into Major Cory's court-martial was commenced; who was appointed to conduct the inquiry; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Secretary of State for War if the inquiry now taking place into the case of Major Cory covers both granting Service men the right to bail pending appeal against court-martial decisions and granting compensation to Major Cory.

Mr. Godber: The inquiry was begun on 19th April as soon as the transcript of the judgment of the Court-Martial Appeal Court had become available. The detailed work of the investigation was done by staff of my noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor's Department and my Department.
A considerable mass of written material is involved in the inquiry, including the results of further special investigations which have been made in East Africa. The documents are at present being studied by my noble and learned Friend and myself personally. We shall complete this examination as soon as possible, and I will then make a statement to the House.
I am looking simultaneously into the question of compensation for Major Cory.

Mr. Morris: While thanking the Secretary of State for War for his reply, may I ask whether we can have some indication of when the report of the inquiry will be published? Will it be published before the House goes into Recess? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many people are concerned as to the whole of the

court-martial procedure? In the meantime, is there not a danger of soldiers having to serve a very long period of punishment and of completing it before there is an opportunity to appeal?

Mr. Godber: It is because of the very important issues involved and of the very involved nature of this case that it requires very careful consideration. My noble Friend and I are hoping to get together and discuss it later this week, but he, of course, is very heavily engaged in other matters as well, and we must have time to consider the various aspects of it. I am fully aware of the importance of it, and if it is possible to give a report before the House goes into Recess, that is what I would wish to do.

Recruits (Previous Convictions)

Mr. Chapman: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will reconsider and relax the restriction on recruitment of young men who have previously been convicted of dishonesty, however minor, particularly where this restriction is preventing former approved school boys, with good records at school and after release, from choosing a career in the Army.

Mr. Godber: Boys from approved schools may be considered for the Army six months after their release and the present rules do ensure that their applications are treated on their merits. We do accept boys who have been at approved schools whenever they are judged suitable.

Mr. Chapman: Yes, but do I detect in what the right hon. Gentleman has said a note of real sympathy about the case behind this Question? Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to go so far as to say that a misdemeanour committed by a boy, and followed by approved school training and a good record at school and a good record on release, will not dog him for the rest of his life if he wants to make the Army his career? Will he make this absolutely clear to governors of approved schools, like myself, so that we may know exactly where we are in these matters?

Mr. Godber: Yes, I am glad the hon. Member has raised this point. We have, of course, to safeguard the position of the Army in relation to the people who


are allowed to join. It is an important factor. On the other hand, we want to see that where a boy can rehabilitate himself in this way he should be given the opportunity. That is why I say that I think that six months is a reasonable interval in which to allow us to judge. We do not want to prevent his entry, but we must at the same time have certain safeguards.

Mr. B. Harrison: While not knowing specifically about the case to which this Question refers, may I ask my right hon. Friend to be extremely careful about relaxing standards in the Army, because some of us feel that it is just this sort of relaxation—and television advertising and so on—which leads to entry of the type of person who walks out?

Mr. Manuel: Condemn them for life?

Mr. Godber: I quite understand the point my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison), but this is not a question of relaxation; it is a question of tightening up.

Mr. Wigg: May I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on both his accession to office in his present Department and also on having some regard to the standard of recruits taken into the Army, because that is a marked change in Government policy?

Mr. Godber: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his personal comment, but I do not think I can accept that there is a change in Government policy.

Overseas Deaths (Inquests)

Mr. Allason: asked the Secretary of State for War in which countries where troops are serving there are no arrangements for a coroner's inquest on the accidental death of a soldier; and what alternative arrangements exist in these countries.

Mr. Godber: A coroner's inquest is a civil institution which can be held on the deaths of soldiers only in territories where it is also held on those of civilians. It is an English institution and exists outside England only where the English legal system has been adopted. Army boards of inquiry are normally held on all unnatural deaths of soldiers overseas irrespective of any civil inquiry.

Mr. Allason: Would my right hon. Friend agree that an Army court of inquiry under the court of inquiry rules is totally unsatisfactory from the point of view of the relatives of the deceased who want to have some simple procedure like that of a coroner's inquest? Would he, therefore, look very carefully into the question of setting up some new form of inquiry which would produce exactly the same results as a coroner's inquest, since a coroner's inquest does provide the next of kin with some satisfaction as to the cause of death which they do not get out of an Army court of inquiry?

Mr. Godber: Yes, I recognise that this is a difficult matter. I think my hon. Friend does know something about the background of this particular case. I think, however, that it is difficult for us to agree to anything of the kind he has suggested, but I am willing to discuss with him any way in which it may be possible to satisfy the next of kin in cases of this sort.

F.N. Rifle

Mr. Shinwell: asked the Secretary of State for War what defects have been discovered in the F.N. rifle and what action is proposed to ensure that the most modern rifle is available to British forces.

Mr. Godber: A number of defects, mostly of a very minor nature, have been found in the F.N. rifle since its introduction into Army service in 1957. All have been overcome by modifications with the exception of a defect in the hand guard. A re-design of this part of the rifle is nearing completion and will be introduced as soon as possible. The F.N. rifle as modified is a thoroughly effective modern weapon. A regards the future we examine continuously all new designs of weapons and discussions within N.A.T.O. are held regularly on this subject.

Mr. Shinwell: Has not the discovery of these defects over a period of time in the Belgian F.N. rifle been a complete vindication of the attitude of the experts of the War Office twelve years ago and a vindication of myself in refusing to accept during the negotiations at Washington on this subject the Belgian F.N. rifle but preferring the British rifle, and is it not also


a condemnation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), who reversed the decision taken by the Labour Government representative at Washington?

Mr. Godber: I realise that the right hon. Gentleman has a great background of knowledge of this subject, which I would not attempt to deny for one moment, but I do not think I can accept his strictures on my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), who has taken very wise decisions on this and very many other matters. In relation to this rifle, I do assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Army is very well satisfied with it. It is a very effective rifle. I am not going into the back history of it. It has been debated many times in this House. It is an effective rifle. That is what matters at the moment.

Mr. Shinwell: Will the right hon. Gentleman refresh or enlighten his mind by looking at columns 378, 379 and 380 in the Official Report of 25th April, 1951, when he will discover what happened on that occasion and how wise were those of us who came to the conclusion that it was far better to have a British-produced rifle, as advised by the experts in the War Office, than to accept the view of the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill)?

Mr. Godber: I recognise that this is a matter with which the right hon. Gentleman has had a great deal to do. I shall be very glad to read those past records. I am sure, however, that the right hon. Gentleman recognises the importance of getting standard equipment in N.A.T.O. This is one of the difficulties involved.

Dartmoor (Death)

Mr. Hayman: asked the Secretary of State for War why his Department in the case of Whitfield versus the War Office at Exeter Assize on 31st October, 1961, withdrew a counter-charge of trespass against Mr. Whitfield and accepted full liability for Mr. Whitfield's son's death on northern Dartmoor.

Mr. Godber: The War Office could only agree to settle Mr. Whitfield's claim on the basis that their use of the land where

the accident occurred was lawful. This was not possible until the trial of the action had progressed some way when, after a discussion between counsel on both sides, an agreement was reached which was satisfactory to all the parties concerned. This agreement was to the effect that:
(a) all allegations against Mr. Whitfield were withdrawn;
(b) the War Office maintained its right to use the range;
(c) the agreement had been reached upon the footing that, on the occasion of the accident only, the safety precautions proved insufficient.

Mr. Hayman: Will the right hon. Gentleman examine the record again, when I think he will find that Mr. Whitfield's counsel made a charge that the byelaws on which the War Office rested their case had lapsed in 1950 and that it was only then that the War Office withdrew the charge? Will he consider again the request for a public inquiry so that all these things can be properly examined in public and so that he can refute the charge that the War Office is seeking to make him a military dictator?

Mr. Godber: I do not think there is any cause for that. I told the hon. Gentleman last week that the best legal advice I could get on the subject was that the byelaws were still in force. I told him that this was the background of the information which I gave him. I have the details here. It is all very involved, and I do not think it would be right for me to elaborate on it before the House at Question Time.

Mr. Paget: If the right hon. Gentleman still maintains that his position in law is right, surely it is very odd that he should have consented to a judgment which was based on precisely the opposite view of the law—that is, that Regulation 52 had ended in 1950 and with it, of course, the byelaw which was made under that Regulation?

Mr. Godber: As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows, I have no legal background, but the advice that I have is that the byelaws in force on 10th December, 1950, were still valid byelaws in force in spite of the expiry in December, 1958, of paragraph 2 of Regulation 52 of the


Defence Regulations. This is the position by virtue of the application of Section 1(3) of the Emergency Laws (Transition of Provision) Act, 1946, and Section 1(3) of the Emergency Laws (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1947. That is the advice under which I am operating at the present time.

Mr. Paget: Why did the right hon. Gentleman consent—

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Paget, for the next Question.

B.A.O.R. Range, Sennelager (Aircraft Accident)

Mr. Paget: asked the Secretary of State for War if he will make a statement as to the circumstances attending the crash of a Belgian transport on a British Army of the Rhine range at Sennelager on 26th June.

Mr. Godber: I should like to take this opportunity of expressing my sympathy with the relatives of those who died.
An exchange of views has taken place in Brussels between the British and Belgian authorities on the subject of the air accident which occurred at Sennelager Range near Detmold on the 26th June, 1963. Agreement was reached on the steps required for further consultation once the Belgian and British Boards of Inquiry had exchanged their individual conclusions bearing in mind the need to bring the investigations to an end as soon as possible.
Meanwhile it would be premature for me to make a statement on the circumstances of the accident.

Mr. Paget: This side of the House joins the right hon. Gentleman in expressing sympathy with the relatives of those who lost their lives in this very tragic accident. May we take it that when it has been ascertained what the cause of this very serious loss of life was, there will be a further statement?

Mr. Godber: Yes, Sir; indeed.

Corporal Patchett

Mr. Paget: asked the Secretary of State for War if he will make a statement on the desertion of Corporal Patchett.

Mr. Godber: Corporal Patchett, who is a member of the Intelligence Corps, has been missing from his unit in Berlin since 2nd July, 1963. An inquiry is being held into the circumstances of his absence.

Mr. Paget: Can the right hon. Gentleman give us any indication at all of how people are selected for the Intelligence Corps and particularly for posting to such a sensitive area as Berlin? This appears to be a young man with a highly unsatisfactory record of employment, and also with a girl friend with East German links. Does it not seem a very odd selection?

Mr. Godber: There are factors in this which obviously have to be looked at by the inquiry. As to the last point, I would suggest that the links with the girl friend did not arise until after the man had been selected and after he had reached Berlin.

Mr. Fernyhough: As defections of this kind affecting both East and West appear to be occurring quite frequently, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that in order to avoid all this trouble and these inquiries he might consider setting up a sensible transfer system?

Mr. Godber: I take note of the hon Gentleman's suggestion. I do not think I could do more.

Sir W. Robson Brown: Will my right hon. Friend investigate the allegations that have been made that this young man's career in commercial life before he joined the Army was not checked and correctly investigated, and if not, why not?

Mr. Godber: As to the positive vetting which was employed, there were two referees and both gave most excellent reports, and this was the basis on which the man was accepted for this work. As I have said, this will be discussed, among other things, in the inquiry which has been set up.

Mr. Wigg: Is it not a fact that the inquiries were made of the vicar of the man's parish, and that no reference was made to his employer, no reference was made to the school authorities and no reference was made to anyone who knew anything about him? Will the right hon. Gentleman also be good enough to say whether the inquiry which


is being made is the normal inquiry which is always held when a soldier is illegally absent and, if that is the case, how can it possibly inquire into the other matters which the right hon. Gentleman said it would?

Mr. Godber: There will be the normal inquiry but, obviously, this does not prevent other inquiries from being made. In regard to the particular point which the hon. Gentleman raised, it is perfectly true that the previous employer was not questioned. As I said, two referees were asked for, and two were given, and both of them gave very satisfactory reports.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

Hospital Facilities, Caithness and Sutherland

Sir D. Robertson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland why adequate facilities for operations and treatment are not available at hospitals in Caithness and Sutherland, resulting in some patients having to be sent to Inverness; and, in cases where specialist services are required, why the daily air service between Inverness and Wick is not used to bring the specialists to Caithness instead of the patients being sent to Inverness.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Noble): Full diagnostic and treatment facilities, with specialist staff, accommodation and equipment, could not be provided economically, or fully used, outside the main centres of population. Visiting specialists already use the air service, but there is a limit to the usefulness of their work where they have no supporting facilities. The appointment of a consultant physician for the area is, however, under consideration.

Sir D. Robertson: Is it not the case that Caithness is the largest community north of Inverness and that the hospitals which are there are converted private houses more than a century old? Is it not also true that these hospitals have out-of-date equipment? Why cannot modern equipment be installed immediately?

Mr. Noble: Because, as I have told my hon. Friend, the Northern Regional

Hospital Board is planning for a start to the new hospital early in 1964.

Sir D. Robertson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is aware of the hardship being caused to patients in the Highlands who, under the existing arrangements, have to pay their own fares in order to receive treatment in distant hospitals; and if he will accordingly alter the arrangements, so that those people do not get less favourable treatment than those who live south of the Highland line.

Mr. Noble: Existing arrangements provide for payment of fares if hardship is shown; I recognise that journeys may be long in the Highlands and other rural areas but the cost is fully taken into account in assessing hardship.

Sir D. Robertson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that these conditions apply only north of the Highlands line? Is it not wrong that patients should have to make a round trip of 300 miles for treatment? Is he also aware of the impossibility of trying to get any money out of the authorities to compensate them? Will he not take action to make this national service equal instead of most unequal as now?

Mr. Noble: It is an exceedingly difficult matter to achieve complete equality because obviously, travelling long distances in the Highlands to hospital is a different proposition from taking a bus to hospital in a town. I appreciate that. However, the Statutes under which we are operating are based on hardship, and it is on hardship that help can be given.

Sir J. Macleod: Is my right hon. Friend aware that Highland people are very proud and do not like to get public assistance in this way, as they have to do today? Surely he could meet my hon. Friend's point on this?

Mr. Noble: I agree about the pride of the Highland people, but as we know—and we get a good many letters from constituents about this—a good many people can be helped.

Hermitage Academy

Mr. Steele: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what reply has been sent to the petition he received from the


Hermitage School Parent Teacher Association regarding the postponement of building the new Hermitage Academy.

Mr. Noble: I have already sent the hon. Member a copy of my reply to the Association. I told them that the Education Authority had put the case very fully to me and I assured them that the claims of this school would stand high if circumstances should enable me to approve further starts this financial year.

Mr. Steele: Would the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Civil Lord of the Admiralty has yet had the discussions with him that he promised that he would have following the Admiralty decision to lease Faslane as a base and the announcement that 900 children will have to be provided for in school accommodation? Can the right hon. Gentleman also say whether the £25 million to be spent on this base includes money for the provision of school accommodation, or whether this will have to come from the Secretary of State's Vote? In view of the new situation which has arisen, will this school not now be begun very quickly?

Mr. Noble: The money will have to come out of the funds which I allocate and not from the Admiralty. I have discussed this problem with the Civil Lord, and it is largely because of this extra commitment that I realise how important this school is to the area.

Mr. Steele: When is it going to start?

Hospital Admission (John O'Brien)

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is aware of the long delay experienced by John O'Brien, 121, Catto Drive, Peterhead, in getting admission to hospital; and when he expects that appropriate accommodation will be available for him.

Mr. Noble: I regret that I cannot say how soon there will be a permanent place for this boy, but arrangements have been made to admit him temporarily to Woodlands Home, Cults, from 1st to 20th August.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that respite,

may I ask whether he is aware that four years ago the parents of this unfortunate child were told that they would have to wait only another two years for a permanent place in hospital for him, but that now—four years later—they are told that they will have to wait still longer? They still cannot get a definite date. Will not my right hon. Friend take urgent action to see that special measures are put in hand to rectify this unfortunate situation?

Mr. Noble: I have the greatest sympathy for the parents in this case. New accommodation for this type of case should be ready by March next year, and it may well be that we shall be able to find accommodation for this boy before then.

Burncrook Filters, Clydebank

Mr. Bence: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what further consideration he has given to the request of the Clydebank Town Council for grant for the extension of the Burncrook Filters.

Mr. Noble: In the absence of any evidence that this scheme has some material effect on the provision of new jobs, I cannot depart from my reply to the Clydebank and District Water Trust that grant cannot be given on the scheme under the Local Employment Act.

Mr. Bence: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the President of the Board of Trade has given an assurance that, if Clydebank Town Council can get a customer for the industrial site there, it will reacquire it from Ingersoll Rand but that the council cannot get a candidate for the site unless it has more water? If it can lay on more water, it will have a better chance of getting that factory and more employment in the area. Will he consider it from that point of view?

Mr. Noble: We will certainly consider it from that point of view, but, as the hon. Member knows, under the provisions of the Local Employment Act I am unable to give grant for a water scheme unless there is evidence of new jobs being or to be created. As soon as evidence is available I can consider the problem.

Roads, Dunbartonshire

Mr. Bence: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what representation he has received respecting the reclassification of roads in the county of Dunbarton.

Mr. Noble: None recently, Sir.

Mr. Bence: But representations have been made within the last few years. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a considerable increase in traffic through the boroughs of Bearsden, Milngavie and Kirkintilloch? In view of the expansion which has taken place and that promised for the future, will the right hon. Gentleman consider applications, if they are made, for reclassification so that we can have more money spent on roads across the County of Dunbarton?

Mr. Noble: I will consider any application from the county council. As the hon. Gentleman knows, this can only be considered at the present time if the county council has equivalent lengths of other roads to be declassified.

Schools (Teaching of Languages)

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will state the financial and other assistance given by his Education Department during each of the last 10 years to schools under his jurisdiction for the teaching of languages other than English.

Mr. Noble: It is not practicable to extract the cost of this particular aspect of school work from the general expenditure on schools. Nor is it practicable to cover within the limits of an Answer the various other kinds of assistance that are given.

Mr. Hughes: In these days of close international relationships, when Scotland is making every effort to increase her international trade, more attention should be paid to the languages of Northern Europe, particularly Scandinavia, with which Scotland has close trade, industrial and commercial ties which she is trying to develop still further. Will the right hon. Gentleman encourage the teaching of these languages for this purpose?

Mr. Noble: I agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman about the importance

of foreign languages. We are doing our best to encourage this, and I am glad that he supports us.

Statisticians

Mr. Hannan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the total number of statisticians employed in all the departments for which he is responsible; and how many are required to make up the full establishment of these departments.

Mr. Noble: My departmental staffs include one whole-time statistician, one part-time medical statistician and seven agricultural economists, an important part of whose work is the interpretation of statistics. There are no vacancies. In addition to these specialists, other officers collect and process statistics as part of their normal duties.

Mr. Hannan: In view of the increasing work of these departments, is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that this staff is large enough to cope with the work that is likely to arise?

Mr. Noble: I think the hon. Gentleman realises that a great deal of the statistics which we need and use for Scotland are obtained by the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Labour. If we find ourselves in difficulty because of shortage of statisticians we will correct the position, but that is not the case today.

Mr. Lawson: Will the right hon. Gentleman make sure that the statistics are accurate, since the figures he gave in opening the recent debate on Scottish industry and employment were manifestly inaccurate?

New Towns (Social Amenities)

Mrs. Hart: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what amount has been spent on social amenities, and what proportion of its total expenditure is represented in each case, by each new town development corporation in Scotland.

Mr. Noble: For the period up to 31st March, 1963, the amounts are £43,989 at East Kilbride, £35,350 at Glenrothes, and £23,645 at Cumbernauld. The respective percentages are 0·2, 0·4 and 0·3.

Mrs. Hart: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that this is an adequate proportion of the new towns' expenditure on social amenities? Has not the time come for him to have a clear look at the need for him to make a special allowance to development corporations to provide the social amenities which ought to go with the housing?

Mr. Noble: The hon. Lady should not regard this as the only money that is spent on these amenities, for there are many other agencies also helping in this way. But it is at least satisfactory, although comparisons are difficult, to know that we seem to be spending more on this than south of the Border.

Dr. Stross: Can right hon. Gentlemen translate these sums of money in terms of Section 132 of the 1948 Act? What proportion of the 6d, rate do they represent?

Mr. Noble: If the hon. Gentleman puts down a Question in those terms I will try to answer it.

Multures

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland why he will not introduce legislation to abolish multures.

Mr. Noble: I am not aware of public concern about multures or problems arising from them sufficient to justify legislation being introduced.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: I hope my right hon. Friend is aware of what multures are. Government policy is being geared to modernisation, progress and efficiency, but here he is faced with taxation paid by tenants for not grinding their corn at mills that no longer exist. Will he not recognise the extraordinary unfairness of this situation?

Mr. Noble: The extraordinary position of multures is no doubt remarkable, but in the efforts to modernise Britain this does not have a very high place in our legislative programme.

Rent Act, 1957

Mr. Hannan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is aware that, under the Rent Act 1957, tenants of small

rented houses are being asked to buy their houses under threat of eviction by court order; and if he will take steps to end this practice.

Mr. Noble: I am aware that there have been cases where landlords of decontrolled houses have given buy or quit notices to tenants since the Rent Act, 1957, but I have no evidence that this is a general practice.

Mr. Hannan: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in my constituency there are two cases concerning old-age pensioners, both widows, one of 80 and one of 82 and blind, who have received such notices? What action will he take to stop this legalised vicious practice which is pursued under the Act which he introduced? Will he at least reconsider the situation and modify it?

Mr. Noble: The very great majority of landlords in Scotland have been very reasonable in the way in which they have treated these cases. If the hon. Member wishes to raise a large number of cases, I will of course consider them, but it is sometimes the position that one or two cases are not properly treated by their landlords.

Employment

Mrs. Hart: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what is his estimate of the number of new jobs needed in Scotland in the next seven years to meet a 5 per cent, rate of economic growth, to meet the problem of declining industries, to provide for a growth in the population of employable age, and to prevent migration from Scotland.

Mr. Noble: Many factors are involved in working out a pattern for physical and economic development, and I do not think that publication of an estimate on the basis suggested by the hon. Lady would be very realistic or helpful.

Mrs. Hart: Why on earth not? How is Scotland to end the unemployment position if the Secretary of State himself is not prepared to set a target for the number of jobs needed? Is it not perfectly clear that it is possible to take 120,000 as the number of unemployed last winter, about 100,000 as the increased number employable and about 150,000 resulting from the decline of industry?
Does not this add up to 370,000? Apparently, the Secretary of State will not even give us an estimate. Why not?

Mr. Noble: I am perfectly prepared to do sums in the same way as the hon. Lady has done them. One difficulty is knowing the validity of those sums in any particular case, and it is for that reason that the Scottish Development Group is studying the whole of this problem.

Mrs. Hart: Has not the right hon. Gentleman studied the figures of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry and other figures which have been produced by people who have looked at the problem? Does he not regard them as at all reliable?

Mr. Noble: I have studied the figures produced by the Scottish Council, but I have heard a number of hon. Gentlemen and hon. Ladies opposite saying that they were not worth looking at.

Mr. Ross: In answer to Question No. 21, the right hon. Gentleman told us that he had a newly organised body of statisticians to give him all this information and to work it all out for him. He has had the help of the N.E.D.C. targets in Great Britain. Why is he so reluctant to set a target in respect of the growth of employment in Scotland?

Mr. Noble: I certainly have the help of those people and of my right hon. Friends at the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Labour, but, as N.E.D.C. itself recognises in its second report, setting targets in a regional sense is a very complicated process.

Housing (Land Prices and Interest Rates)

Mr. Manuel: asked the Secretary of Slate for Scotland what was the average price per acre paid by Scottish local authorities for land for housing development in 1950, 1957 and 1962.

Mr. Noble: I regret that this information is not available. Local authorities are not obliged to report to me the price they pay for housing land.

Mr. Manuel: Nevertheless, is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the announcement in the Glasgow Herald of 4th July that his Scottish Development Depart-

ment proposes that housing land prices be increased for new town development from between about £120 and £150 to £900 to £1,500? Will not this aggravate the problem, already increasingly difficult for local authorities, of providing housing in new towns? By what right has he given his Department authorisation to make this proposal?

Mr. Noble: I think that the hon. Member has misread the article in the Glasgow Herald. It did not refer to housing land.

Mr. Brewis: Has my right hon. Friend any evidence that land prices are hindering local authorities in their housing programmes?

Mr. Noble: I have no evidence of that because in Scotland when local authorities have to build on expensive land they may be assisted by the expensive site subsidy which we introduced in the Housing (Scotland) Act, 1962.

Mr. Ross: If the purchase of this land was not for housing, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what the purpose was? Did that purpose justify the addition to the original price?

Mr. Noble: The addition is not for houses but for other things such as factories or schools. In this case it is only fair that the development charges, which the development corporation has undertaken, should be taken into account in the setting of land values whatever use there may be.

Mr. Manuel: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what were the total capital expenditure and the total interest charges paid by Scottish local authorities for the provision of municipal houses in 1950–57 and 1962.

Mr. Noble: I shall, with permission, circulate these figures in the Official Report.

Mr. Manuel: The Secretary of State's answers get briefer and briefer and contain less and less information. Is he aware that because of the Government's stingy and mean policy, because of their increased interest charges and cutting of housing subsidies, Scottish local authorities are undoubtedly getting into a complete morass of debt and that this in itself will curb the building of more


houses in future? Will he not do something to ease this financial position for the local authorities and make it easier for them to provide houses?

Mr. Noble: I never expected to hear an hon. Member complaining about Answers being short. The fact of the matter is that local authorities are building about 26,000 houses this year compared with 21,000 last—these are figures for the end of March—and, as I explained in the debate last week, the view of the Government is that if subsidies are to be given they should be given openly as subsidies and not by means of an unduly low interest rate.

Sir J. Gilmour: Will my right hon. Friend say whether, judged by the number of houses being started, interest rates are in fact hindering house building?

Mr. Noble: There is certainly no evidence of that from the figures which I have just given.

The available figures relating to expenditure of Scottish local authorities on municipal housing are as follows:


Year
Total capital expenditure
Total interest paid



£ millions
£ millions


1949–50
31·9
Not available


1950–51
33·3
Not available


1951–52
40·7
7·3


1952–53
48·7
8·6


1953–54
52·8
11·2


1954–55
47·7
12·7


1955–56
44·1
15·1


1956–57
42·3
17·9


1961–62
38·3
29·2


The 1961–62 figures are provisional.

Rheumatism

Miss Herbison: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland when the centre in Glasgow for the treatment of and research into rheumatological diseases will be opened.

Mr. Noble: Premises at Baird Street are now being re-constructed for this purpose and the work is expected to be completed in the latter part of 1964.

Miss Herbison: Is the Secretary of State aware that his Answer makes it very clear that there has again been a postponement of the date of the opening of this centre? Is he also aware that since 1957 serious representations have

been made by consultants and others about the necessity of such a Scottish centre to provide treatment and research for more than half Scotland's population? Can he tell us what is the hold-up with this centre and whether anything can be done to open it much more quickly?

Mr. Noble: I am informed that there has been no hold-up in the sense of delay with the premises at Baird Street. The difficulty lies in the fact that it is a rather old building and that there are different floor levels at the front and back of the building, which has been causing a good deal of difficulty in re-designing it for its new purposes.

Miss Herbison: Surely all these difficulties were known when the Secretary of State gave the approximate date for the opening of the centre. Is he not also aware that there were other premises, much more suitable, which could have been taken, but which the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor, or the regional hospital board, decided should not be taken? Does not his answer show the Government's lack of planning?

Mr. Noble: The facts may well have been known. It is quite different to know that there are difficulties and to know how long they will take to get over. The planning of this has not been in my Department but in the regional hospital board.

Pneumoconiosis and Carcinoma

Miss Herbison: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what research is being undertaken in Scotland into the probable relation between pneumoconiosis and carcinoma of the lung.

Mr. Noble: Both diseases are the subject of research programmes supported by public funds, but no such programme in Scotland is specifically directed to the relationship between them.

Miss Herbison: Can the Secretary of State give us any idea if funds in Scotland are to be devoted to this? Is he not aware that there are two main reasons why this should bed one? The first is that a number of miners have been found to be suffering from both diseases. The second is that on the


death of the miner the widow is often denied industrial death benefit because death is said to be due to carcinoma and not to pneumoconiosis? Will he not do something to try to speed up research in Scotland into these two diseases?

Mr. Noble: If a case is made to me or to the Medical Research Council or the Scottish Hospital Endowments Research Trust, I am sure that it will be considered very carefully both on its merits and on the desirability of this form of research.

Universities

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has studied the resolution passed by the Annual General Meeting of the Educational Institute of Scotland on 7th June, 1963, and then sent to him, asking for the immediate expansion of Scottish universities so that more places may be available for Scottish students; and what reply he has sent.

Mr. Noble: The letter containing this resolution has been acknowledged, and I have brought it to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who is responsible for grants to universities.

Mr. Hughes: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that he is not doing enough? The resolution mentioned in my Question is only part of a wide and strong demand for university expansion in Scotland, not only in the interests of trade, industry and commerce, but in the interests of the learned professions in Scotland who serve the public so well. Will the right hon. Gentleman redouble his efforts to help more university expansion more quickly?

Mr. Noble: As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows, questions about the availability of university places should be addressed to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary, who recently received a deputation from the National Committee for a new university in Scotland.

Miss Harvie Anderson: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the feelings of many parents in this connection regarding university places?

Mr. Noble: Yes, Sir. I am indeed aware that many parents are worried about the problem, but I think it is fair to say that the funds which my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has made available have enabled the Scottish universities and the Royal College of Science and Technology to plan an expansion of over 30 per cent. in the current quinquennium, from about 18,300 in 1961–62 to over 24,000 in 1966–67.

Rents

Sir F. Maclean: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the guidance he has given to local authorities, including Saltcoats, about the level of rents to be charged for their houses.

Mr. Noble: I have suggested that gross annual values afford the best guide currently available to authorities in fixing rents. In Saltcoats rents equivalent to gross annual value would be on the average 17s. per week.

Sir F. Maclean: Is my right hon. Friend aware that at the recent burgh elections in Saltcoats a pamphlet was distributed which said:
The Secretary of State wants a rent of £2 15s. per week for your house. Save yourself. Vote Labour."?

Mr. Noble: This has been brought to my notice. Very curious things obviously happen at burgh elections, but, as I have said, the only figure I have mentioned as a guide is gross annual value, and this represents 17s. a week. The figure quoted is therefore nonsense and wholly out of line with the facts.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Saltcoats is one of the best administered burghs in the whole of Scotland, that the electorate have repeatedly passed votes of confidence in the leaders of that administration, and that the people of Saltcoats are solidly behind them in their progressive housing policy?

Mr. Noble: I am aware that the rent level in Saltcoats at 8s. 8d. is about the lowest in Scotland. This may have something to do with the election pamphlet to which my hon. Friend referred.

Potatoes

Mr. Brewis: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what progress is being made with the clearance of the early potato crop; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Noble: Lifting of the crop in the traditional early potato growing areas of the south-west of Scotland (mainly Ayrshire and Wigtownshire) began on the 13th June. It is estimated that so far about a quarter has been cleared. I understand that lifting is continuing at a slow rate as weather conditions permit and according to demand. I realise that the situation is causing concern.

Mr. Brewis: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in Wigtownshire about one-quarter of the crop is being lifted compared with two years ago and that the price is now considerably below the cost of production? Is not this caused entirely by unnecessary imports? For example, even last week a cargo of 600 tons of early potatoes came to Leith from Cyprus, and many more than that the week before? Will my right hon. Friend look carefully at this question of imports and in particular at why it is necessary to reduce the tariff from £9 to £2 a ton on 1st July every year?

Mr. Noble: I shall, of course, keep these points in mind, but it is a fact that we have imported considerably less potatoes this year than either last year or the year before, and I think my hon. Friend also realises that there is a considerable public demand for new potatoes often before our own are ready to be lifted.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps he is taking to assist the growers of early potatoes in Scotland.

Mr. Noble: Assistance for home growers of new potatoes is afforded by the tariff which varies according to the season. Imports are tapering off and the main problem now stems from the delayed marketing of the home crop.

Mr. Hughes: What was the cause of the delayed marketing of the home crop? Was it not due to the fact that the Government allowed these big imports of potatoes from the Commonwealth and other countries? There is practically no regu-

lation of imports at the vital time when these Scottish potatoes come on the market. Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that if there has to be some arrangement with other countries, the imports should be so regulated that the growers of Ayrshire potatoes know exactly what the position is likely to be?

Mr. Noble: The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that one of the difficulties about the early potato crop is knowing, because of weather conditions, when it is likely to be ready to be lifted. As I have told my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis), imports this year have been considerably below those for either last year or the year before.

Mr. Brewis: Is my right hon. Friend aware that growers of early potatoes have to submit to an acreage quota? Surely this implies that they will get a reasonable market for what they produce?

Mr. Noble: This seems to be a question for the Potato Marketing Board, which I believe is meeting this afternoon and looking at the whole of this problem.

Sir F. Maclean: Is my right hon. Friend aware that whereas the price of potatoes last year was £50 a ton this year it is £20, and that this hits the small grower very hard indeed?

Mr. Noble: I fully appreciate this, but I have noticed this type of thing happening off and on for the last 25 years in areas which grow early potatoes.

Mr. Brewis: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is forestalled in the matter.

Scottish Central Council in Child Care

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will refer to the Scottish Advisory Council on Child Care the question of setting up a Scottish Central Council in Child Care.

Mr. Noble: I take it that the hon. Member has in mind a council to deal


primarily with training. The Advisory Council itself submitted to me last week a report on this and other related matters. I fully appreciate the need for better training arrangements, and I shall accordingly study this report carefully and urgently, and shall arrange for it to be published.

Mr. Thomson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I am most grateful for that Answer? Will he bear in mind that the Scottish child care service seems to be greatly overloaded and that many child care officers are migrating to England and Wales because there are higher salaries and better training arrangements there?

Mr. Noble: I shall certainly bear that in mind.

Power Station, Dundee

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what consideration he has now given to the recommendation of the Mackenzie Committee about a major extension to the new power station at present being built at Dundee.

Mr. Noble: As recommended by the Committee the North Board has examined this site and has made certain proposals for its development. These are now being considered.

Mr. Thomson: While thanking the Minister for that Answer, can he say whether the statement recently made by the South Board with regard to the new generating station in any way cuts across his consideration of establishing this big extension at Dundee?

Mr. Noble: Obviously the problem of new stations has to be considered in the light of the demands of Scotland as a whole.

International Fisheries Conference

Mr. Hoy: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what arrangements he has mad; for Scottish fishing interests to be represented at the forthcoming inter national fisheries conference.

Mr. Noble: I am unable at this stage to say whether representatives of the fishing industries of the various countries

concerned will be invited to participate directly in the proposed conference or whether it will be on an exclusively inter-Governmental basis; but I can assure the hon. Member that in any event the organisations representing Scottish fishing interests will be fully consulted about the matters to be discussed at the conference.

Mr. Hoy: Why all this delay? Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that as far back as April of this year the Lord Privy Seal, in making reference to the conference, said that this was a matter of great urgency and of outstanding importance to the fishing industry of our country? If three months have elapsed and the Government have not made up their mind about who will represent them, what confidence can the industry have in the negotiations that are about to start?

Mr. Noble: As the hon. Gentleman realises, when there is a conference involving a large number of nations, it is not for one nation to lay down exactly how the conference will be run.

Mr. Hector Hughes: Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that this conference is taking place at Governmental level? He is in a particularly advantageous position to see that one of Scotland's major industries is properly represented. Will the right hon. Gentleman take steps to see that it is?

Mr. Noble: I have given the hon. Gentleman an assurance that the fishing interests will be fully consulted. I told him that a decision had not been taken as to whether or not it would be exclusively on an inter-Governmental basis.

Dame Irene Ward: If a Member of an English fishing port might intervene, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether, in making arrangements to consult all the interests concerned, he will consult the wholesale merchants and even the house wife who is interested in prices, so that we can all have a go in this matter?

Mr. Noble: I am sure that I and my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will wish to consult all the interests concerned, and not least the hon. Lady.

HON. MEMBER FOR CENTRAL AYRSHIRE (SPEECH)

Mr. Manuel: On a point of order. May I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to—

Mr. Speaker: I have a slight suspicion that the hon. Member is going out of order. I cannot be associated with what he is about to say, but I must hear what he has to say.

Mr. Manuel: I thought that I had notified you, Mr. Speaker. I thank you for the opportunity—[Laughter.]
I want to ask you if I may have the opportunity to apologise to the House, and, in particular, to the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) for wrongly attributing to him, during a speech I made on the Public Order Bill yesterday, references to coloured people and immoral earnings.
The hon. Member did not make these references; they were made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. N. Pannell), to whom I spoke afterwards about what I had said, because he was not in the Chamber.

Mr. Speaker: I must explain the difficulty. I understand what the hon. Member is saying, and the House will appreciate it. The point is that it does not raise a point of order for me. The strict position is that if the hon. Member desires to make a statement in personal explanation he should submit it to the Chair before making it. I wish to make that point clear.

ELECTRICITY BOARDS, SCOTLAND (MACKENZIE COMMITTEE'S REPORT)

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Noble): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement.
The Government have given very careful consideration to the findings of the Mackenzie Committee, including its central recommendation that the functions of the two electricity boards in Scotland should be transferred to a single authority.
In making this recommendation, the Committee's purpose, which must also be

the Government's, was to ensure that the whole operation of generating, transmitting and distributing electricity in Scotland is carried out on the most economic basis possible, and that judgments on questions arising in this connection—for example, as regards the size, character and location of new generating stations—are not influenced by narrower considerations arising out of the financial consequences to the separate accounts of one or other of the existing boards.
It is, however, clear that the proposal to merge the two existing boards is unwelcome to a wide range of interests, especially those who have benefited by the immensely valuable work that the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board has carried out during the last twenty years. For my part, I do not think that it has yet been established that the continued existence of the two boards is incompatible with the provision of electricity in the most economic manner, and I intend to see what can be achieved by close consultation and co-operation between the two boards.
I have myself talked the position over with the chairmen of the two boards, and have arranged that they will jointly discuss with me or my officers any issues that may arise between them. In the expectation that the common purpose of the Mackenzie Committee and of the Government can by this means be secured, the Government have decided not to proceed at the present time with the legislation that would be necessary to implement the Committee's recommendation on this aspect of the matter.
A particular subject on which discussions with the two boards are proceeding is the comparative cost of providing electricity, on the one hand, by the proposed hydro-electric generating schemes that the North of Scotland Board has published, and, on the other, by the installation of additional thermal generating capacity elsewhere in Scotland.
In the light of the comparative costs thus established, the North of Scotland Board will decide whether it wishes the necessary formal inquiries to be undertaken into the hydro-electric schemes; and the comparative costs will be part of the material placed before any inquiries that proceed.
I have one further point to add. A subordinate recommendation by the Mackenzie Committee was that special assistance should be provided to enable rural electrification in the North of Scotland to be speeded up, and to link the islands with the mainland by submarine cable.
The North of Scotland Board considers that most of these cables will be needed only when the existing diesel generating stations on the main islands have to be renewed, but has drawn up a programme for accelerating the present rate at which consumers in the more remote areas can be given supplies. This programme involves capital expenditure that would increase the loss the board incur at present on similar connections.
The Board's capital investment proposals are now under consideration, as are those of the remainder of the electricity boards throughout the country; and a decision will be taken as soon as possible.

Mr. Ross: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is a rare pleasure for me to be able to congratulate him, but that it is all the more sincere in this case because his decision will be received in Scotland, and the Highlands, in particular, with a considerable amount of relief? There has been a considerable delay in getting on with developments in the hydro-electric Board area, in respect of generation, as a result of the proceedings of the Committee and all this delay about a decision.
What will the right hon. Gentleman do now to speed up the necessary work? Can he afford any comfort and hope to my hon. Friend the Member for the Western Isles (Mr. Malcolm MacMillan) about the speed-up of distribution to the islands?

Mr. Noble: I thank the hon. Member for the very unusual compliment that he has paid me. I realise that it has taken a long time from the start of the inquiries until today, but I think that the House as a whole realises that big issues were involved. The problem not only of where to generate but how to get electricity to whichever area it be, North or South, at the cheapest price, is the problem which really interests Scotland in the long term.
As soon as the discussions that I have mentioned in my statement have taken place between the two Boards and my officers the North of Scotland Board may then ask me to publish some of its schemes for public inquiry.

Sir T. Moore: I do not disagree with the view expressed by my right hon. Friend, but is he satisfied that this decision will lead, in the end, to cheaper and more widely distributed electricity throughout Scotland?

Sir G. Nabarro: Dearer electricity.

Mr. Noble: Cheaper and more widely distributed electricity is the aim both of the Mackenzie Committee and the Government, because it is vital to the interests of Scotland. If it should prove—I see no reason why it should—that the two Boards are unable to work the scheme satisfactorily from this point of view, it may be that in a few years' time another decision will have to be taken. But I believe that it can be done in this way.

Mr. Rankin: I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that in the meantime he did not intend to proceed with the amalgamation of the two Boards. Are we to take it that the decision is not a final one, but merely temporary and, perhaps, even political?

Mr. Noble: For the reason that I gave to my hon. Friend just now, it would be quite wrong for anybody to take a permanent decision. I think that this new scheme can work.

Sir G. Nabarro: I do not wish to associate myself in any way with the congratulatory note sounded by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross). I express my grave disappointment with the Minister's decision in this matter. Does he realise that the people he should consult are the Members of this House, and not a lot of foreign bodies outside? [Interruption] I mean foreign non-parliamentary bodies—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: If we drown ourselves by interruptions we do not get on.

Sir G. Nabarro: Will he bear in mind that 80 per cent. of the capital of the immensely expensive North of Scotland Board is paid by the English taxpayer and that in view of that hon. Members representing English constituencies may


have some interest in the future course of events in the north of Scotland and in due economy being practised in the generation of power there?

Mr. Noble: If my hon. Friend had been in the House on many occasions during Question Time I do not think that he could doubt the fact that the statement I have made today was broadly in keeping with what has been said by hon. Members on both sides of the House. His wish and mine is that we should provide electricity in Scotland in the most efficient and cheapest way, and this is what I intend to try to achieve.

Mr. T. Fraser: Will the right hon. Gentleman repudiate at once the suggestion that the English taxpayer is financing the generation and distribution of electricity in the north of Scotland? Will he say whether or not the generation and distribution of electricity there is as efficient and economic as in any other part of the country and bear in mind, too, that people throughout Scotland greatly resent the intervention of foreigners into what is purely a Scottish activity?

Mr. Noble: I think that in this House we ought not to resent the intervention of anybody, from whatever part of the country he comes. I agree with the hon. Gentleman and I think that the statement made by my hon. Friend may be a little wide of the truth.

Sir D. Robertson: Is it not a fact that most of the opposition referred to by the

hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) has been fomented by the propaganda of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board? Is not it also the case that the costs incurred by that body in building the stations were abnormal and many million pounds more than the figures submitted to Parliament? Does not the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Sir G. Nabarro) indicate the proper procedure, which is to bring this matter now—after long delays—to the Floor of this House and get at all the facts?

Mr. Noble: I think that the House has had opportunities on many occasions to discuss the problems of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. I am not concerned with any difficulties that may have occurred in the past. I want to get the position right for the future.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot debate this now. There is no Question before the House.

BILL PRESENTED

Malaysia

Bill to make provision for and in connection with the federation of North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore with the existing States of the Federation of Malaya, presented by Mr. Sandys, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. R. A. Butler and the Attorney-General; read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 136.]

PORTS (ROCHDALE COMMITTEE'S REPORT)

3.43 p.m.

The Minister of Transport (Mr. Ernest Marples): I beg to move,
That this House welcomes the statement made by Her Majesty's Government on Wednesday, 6th March, 1963, on the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Major Ports of Great Britain (Command Paper No. 1824).
My hon. and gallant Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will wind up this debate and answer points which are made by hon. Members. I wish to make clear that I shall deal generally with the Rochdale Report, its main recommendations and the Government's conclusions on those recommendations, and that I shall not attempt to tackle either the application of the Government's main decisions to particular ports or the specific problems of those ports.
I think that the first question we must ask ourselves is: why was the Rochdale Committee appointed? It was appointed at the end of March, 1961, when there was widespread concern throughout industry at the delays in the movement of cargoes through British ports. We therefore set up a small Committee, under Lord Rochdale, to inquire into the adequacy of our major ports to meet present and future needs. The terms of reference of that Committee were deliberately made extremely wide. They were:
To consider to what extent the major docks and harbours of Great Britain are adequate to meet present and future national needs; whether the methods of working can be improved; and to make recommendations.
A remit of that kind was designed to enable the Committee to investigate pretty well everything affecting the efficient operation of our major ports. I am glad to say that the Committee took advantage of this latitude. I want the House to understand that the appointment of the Rochdale Committee was not an isolated act. It fitted into the pattern of the Government's policy for an overall review of transport generally. The Rochdale Report is just one stage in the continuous and planned survey of our transport system as a whole. It should be studied and its recommendations linked up with the policies we are pursuing in other aspects of transport. For the railways we have had the Transport Act, 1962, and then the Beeching plan.

For canals we have had the Report of the Bowes Committee. On the question of future transport requirements we have had the Hall Report and on the problems of urban traffic we shall shortly have the Buchanan Report. As was announced recently, we are putting in hand an independent inquiry into the road haulage licensing system. Thus, we have started action in many spheres leading in due course to the reshaping and modernising of the railways and our ports, and the rebuilding of our urban areas to cope with the motor car.
The Rochdale Report, I believe, is a landmark in the history of the major ports of Great Britain. Since the war there have been various reports on particular aspects of port working. Most of them, I think, were valuable. They related to mechanisation, the turn-round of shipping, dock labour and port organisation. But the Rochdale Committee was the first to carry out a comprehensive survey of the major ports. It is no exaggeration to say that the Report is the most important document in this field to have appeared this century.
Whatever opinion may be held about particular recommendations in the Report—knowing the House as I do I am sure that some hon. Members will have something to say about their own constituency interests—I feel sure that hon. Members will join with me in expressing our warmest gratitude to Lord Rochdale and his able colleagues for their public service. More than 6,000 copies of the Report have been sold, which proves that it has merit and commands interest.
Before dealing with the Report's chief recommendations and conclusions I must say that the Report provides evidence that a comprehensive review of the industry was necessary. Paragraph 45 refers to the growing sense of dissatisfaction on the part of port users. Paragraph 617 refers to the grave danger that British ports would progressively become more and more inadequate to cater for larger modern vessels. And, most important of all, paragraph 140 points out the urgent need for the better co-ordination of plans for the development of our ports and docks on a national basis.
Now I come to some of the major recommendations and the Government's conclusions. The Government accept the following main recommendations in the


Rochdale Report. First, that there is an urgent need for the development of a co-ordinated national plan for port development. Secondly, that this plan should be developed by a central planning agency which would formulate a plan and supervise its execution. Thirdly, that the essential instrument to secure this should be the control of capital investment in major port projects which we propose should be exercised by the Minister acting on the advice of the central agency.
We have already taken some action. We have set up this central agency which will be know as the National Ports Council. Lord Rochdale has agreed to serve as the first Chairman of the Council and I announced the names of other members yesterday. I am grateful to them all for agreeing to serve in this way.
The decision to assume central control of major port investment is fundamental to the whole issue. This is essential to ensure that particular developments fall into their proper place as components of the national plan. One of the chief functions of the National Ports Council will be to prepare the plan itself and also to encourage and advise port authorities on all works which appear to be in the national as well as the local interest. All that we have accepted. But in this sphere of control there is one aspect of the recommendations which the Government cannot accept and I think that I ought to mention it at this point. That is in paragraph 218, which recommended that powers should be taken to direct ports to undertake schemes which were considered by the central planning agency to be essential.
The Government are not prepared to go so far as this. I can assure the House that there will be no question of directing a port authority to undertake an investment scheme against its own wishes. I make one exception to that. For reasons of safety we may need power to require ports to install radar and radio communication equipment for the effective control of shipping approaching a port.

Mr. R. J. Mellish: Suppose the National Ports Council proposes a scheme which is rejected by the appropriate port. In that case will the Minister seek powers to intervene and decide the matter on its merits?

Mr. Marples: That is a hypothetical question. The main point we are concerned about here is that the grand strategy should be gone into by the National Ports Council, which should give advice to the Minister on the merits of that case. If it was against the national interest that it should be carried out, serious consideration would have to be given to that point.

Mr. Mellish: Should not the Minister find a way to do this? With all the good will in the world the National Ports Council might prepare a scheme which the port does not accept. Will not the Minister have power to decide who he thinks is right?

Mr. Marples: When the legislation comes before the House we can discuss this point in greater detail. At present, the National Ports Council has very little power. It is not even a statutory body.

Mr. John Morris: When legislation is brought before the House, will the Minister reserve to himself these positive powers of intervention where they are needed in the national interest?

Mr. Marples: In that particular case we had better wait for the legislation to come before the House. The idea of having this debate today is to ask hon. Members on both sides of the House for their views. The legislation will not be introduced until next Session. The House must remember that the Government will have great powers when giving public money at low rates of interest for port development. Very few ports would refuse that money if it were offered.
On the control of capital investment a crucial question will be the minimum figure. This is a crucial point and there are quite a number on which we shall have controversy. I should like the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) to listen to this. On major capital investment the crucial question will be: what is the minimum figure over which the Government will exercise control and under which the ports will be free to act without permission?
At this stage, I do not wish to be committed to a precise figure, but, in principle, the Government want to fix it at a high level because it is no part of


our overall plan to control the day-today developments in our smaller ports. The National Ports Council, when it is given statutory powers, should be interested in the strategy and the grand design rather than in a lot of normal day-to-day matters which arise during the ordinary course of management.
Before deciding the actual figure of the level of investment at which control should bite, I shall consider the advice given by the Council. The Council will draw up the national port development plan and advise me on specific major port projects in addition to advising me on the minimum figure of investment. I shall give its advice great weight and in legislation it will probably be convenient to give the Minister power to prescribe the figure by Order, by means of an affirmative or negative Resolution.
The decision to implement the national port plan by way of centralised control of major capital investment was taken only after very careful thought. Arguments can be brought against it. There are, naturally, some drawbacks to centralisation because that entails division of responsibility in some cases. But the decisive argument is that the distribution and volume of the traffic in our ports is so important that we must guide and assist port development from the centre. The Government have deliberately taken the view that major investment is a matter of national as well as local policy and that it cannot therefore be determined by purely local considerations.
On finance, the Government's attitude is that where we are satisfied that a proposal for development is in the national interest, and in accordance with the national plan, it should not be frustrated by the inability of the port authority concerned to raise money on the market. But let me say this. To say that the development of a port is in the national interest surely means that the port in question will carry more traffic, or be more efficient, or perhaps both. This ought normally to pay for the development. The point is that the actual traffic which goes through the ports and docks should be able to finance the capital raised and give to it the opportunity for modernising and, maybe, increasing its size.
It is too early at this stage to lay down elaborate rules. We should stick to two principles. The first is that the shipper should not be subsidised by the general public. The second is that the national port plan must go ahead. I see no reason to believe that these principles will come into conflict with each other.
I come now to a very important part of the Report. That is what is known as estuarial grouping. It is referred to in paragraph 115, which says that there are
important advantages to be gained from the amalgamation of certain existing port undertakings in Great Britain, on a local or estuarial basis. Financial terms for such amalgamations should be settled by negotiation if possible, but, failing agreement between the ports, by arbitration. Appropriate scheme-making powers should be vested in the Minister of Transport, acting on the advice of the proposed National Ports Authority.
If there is to be a national port development plan—and I think that it has been generally agreed in the House and outside, and welcomed—an important element must be a comprehensive review of the structure and organisation of our major ports. It was for this reason that in my hon. and gallant Friend's statement on 6th March this year, one of the chief functions to be exercised by the National Ports Council was stated as being that of preparing plans for the grouping of ports by geographical areas, wherever it appeared that this would make for greater efficiency.
I stress the two words"greater efficiency" because they are of key importance. I do not think that ports should be amalgamated merely for doctrinaire reasons; it should be for greater efficiency. We shall be guided in the main by the advice of the National Ports Council. I shall ask it to tackle this problem on a strictly realistic, commonsense and non-doctrinaire basis. The objective will be to determine the best type of organisation for the grouping of ports which have developed historically round an estuary or a major river.
Proper consultation is, of course, necessary—not only with the individual port authorities, but with all other interested organisations, of which there are quite a number. The special needs and features of the area will require to be determined. It may well prove to


be the case that different geographical areas will require somewhat different systems of organisation. Nevertheless, the Government accept in principle the general idea of estuarial or regional groupings, under autonomous local boards wherever such groupings are likely to promote greater efficiency.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: Suppose there is disagreement between the ports which are to be amalgamated and arbitration has taken place and certain decisions been made to which there is still strong opposition. Does the Minister propose to take powers to enforce the result of such arbitration?

Mr. Marples: The answer to that question is that I shall put before the House proposals to enforce that particular arbitration decision when the legislation is introduced next Session. Whether the House agrees with it or not is, I suppose, another matter, but it will be put forward as a power which the Government wish to have. I am putting this forward because it is an organisational and a managerial problem rather than a political problem.

Mr. David Webster: What type of valuation will be made of the assets and earnings of a port about to be merged?

Mr. Marples: That is a point which must be left to detailed investigation. It is difficult to answer that sort of question at this stage. When a merger is proposed there will be a question of valuing the installations, the land and the traffic. It will be a very complicated problem.
I want next to talk about the British Transport Docks Board. It was formed under the Transport Act, 1962. The Board's ports comprise about one-third of the total port capacity of Great Britain. The point is that ports under the jurisdiction of the Docks Board are not to be regarded as in a separate category from other ports in the country. They will be treated in exactly the same wav as other ports. In some places, such as South Wales and on the Humber, the Docks Board is responsible for the greater part of the port capacity in the area. Elsewhere, the Board owns and operates individual ports.
In every case it will be for the National Ports Council to study the problems of

the particular estuary or area which it considers would prima facie benefit by some form of grouping or amalgamation. The Council should do this without reference to the actual ownership of any of the ports concerned, whether that ownership is vested in the nation, in some form of public trust, in the local authority or in private enterprise. If the Council comes to the conclusion that the amalgamation of a group of ports under some new public authority is in the interests of operational efficiency, and if the Minister of the day accepts this conclusion, then all the ports in the area will come together under a new form of ownership.

Mr. Mellish: This is contrary to what the Rochdale Report said. The Report thought it right that the British Transport Docks Boards as such should be wiped out. Is the Minister saying that he does not accept this as a principle and that these ports will be debated on their merits within the particular grouping?

Mr. Marples: They will be considered on their merits. There is no automatic wiping out of anything, whether it be a private port or the port of a public authority, a local authority or the Docks Board. What I am anxious to see is that the amalgamation into the estuarial groups shall be treated purely technically and on its operational merits. The hon. Member is quite right; this is an important point of principle.
I will repeat what I said. I want the Council to look at the estuary without reference to the ownership of any of the ports concerned, whether that ownership is vested in the nation, or in some form of public trust, or in the local authority, or in private enterprise. If the Council comes to the conclusion that the amalgamation of a group of ports under a new public authority is in the interests of operational efficiency, and if the Minister of the day accepts that conclusion, then all the ports in the area will come together under a new form of ownership. Those words were very carefully chosen and are the results of the Government's thinking in this matter. It is accepted by Lord Rochdale and the Docks Board.
As my hon. and gallant Friend said on 6th March, it would be premature to come to any conclusion now about


the future status of the individual ports at present owned and operated by the British Transport Docks Board, or by any other authority. They are all treated alike.

Mr. A. P. Costain: Does that also include the packet ports of Folkestone and Dover?

Mr. Marples: Yes, Sir. Until the National Ports Council has completed the thorough inquiries which it will have to institute before deciding what may be the best form of ownership and management in a certain area, we cannot profitably speculate on what may be the future of any particular port within that area. That applies whether a port is owned by the Docks Board or anybody else. I repeat; for the purpose of the development of the national plan for ports the Docks Boards will be in exactly the same position as all other ports in the country.

Mr. Mellish: May I get this clearly on the record? Let us suppose that estuarial groupings have been formed by the Minister. Do we in the House have a chance to debate them and approve of them?

Mr. Marples: We must leave that until a later stage when we discuss the legislation. All sorts of Amendments will be moved, proposing the affirmative or the negative Resolution procedure, or proposing that no Resolution of the House is necessary, but we must leave that until the Government introduce the legislation.
It may be as well at this point if I add that the same equality of treatment applies in another very important respect. The national port development plan will be implemented through the control of major capital investment. That is to say, within the framework of the national plan, individual port projects above a minimum figure will have to be examined by the National Ports Council before they are approved by the Minister. This will apply to the ports owned and operated by the Docks Board exactly as it will to other ports.
Major projects will have to be submitted to the National Ports Council. The Council will advise the Minister of the day on them, taking into account the requirements of the national plan.

British Transport Docks Board ports will not, in other words, form a separate and privileged class. Nor, for that matter, will any other port authority form a separate and privileged class.
I hope that what I have said has allayed some of the anxieties which have been felt and answered some of the questions of the hon. Member for Bermondsey. My hon. and gallant Friend and I have between us been around practically all the major ports and most of the minor ports. Having made this tour, having seen the way in which they operate, and having been on the Continent and seen the way in which they operate, I am certain that the need for action is urgent. There is no doubt about that at all. We must go ahead without delay. We have, therefore, set up the National Ports Council in advance of legislation. There is plenty of work for the Council to do—and it can do it without legislation; but, of course, it cannot do the whole job unless the House gives it some assistance.
I have asked all major port authorities to let me have details of their large capital development schemes in the near future and in the distance future so that we and the Council can examine these projects and see whether they appear to be consistent with the general pattern of a national development plan.
Many hon. Members have interests in ports, and they may well ask what is to happen to schemes which are already in the pipeline. The answer is that each and every scheme will be considered on its merits. I will seek the advice of the Council on every such project, and there will be no delay in letting the port authority concerned have views on the desirability or otherwise of going ahead with it.

Mr. James H. Hoy: What about Leith?

Mr. Marples: No doubt the hon. Member will be able to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and be: able to make a very informative speech, to which we shall listen with interest. My hon. and gallant Friend will reply to it when he winds up the debate.
There is another point which I think will interest the House and which is of crucial importance—the co-ordination of the port development plan with the


overall transport plan. Our plans for future major development in our ports must not be viewed in isolation. There are two things which we have to do. First, we must ensure that plans for developing our ports system are closely linked with development plans for the other parts of our transport system. Secondly, all transport developments—road, rail and ports—must be interlocked with the work of those Government Departments concerned with the long-term aspects of the distribution of trade and industry. The control over major capital investment schemes in ports will enable port developments to be related to other developments in the public sector of transport. Already, there have been discussions between Lord Rochdale and Dr. Beeching about railways, and we shall do the same about roads. The point is that at the end of the year we shall be in a position to interlock the whole thing—not only the ports and the railways, but also the roads and the growing points of industry in this country.

Mr. Walter Edwards: Will the Minister see that Dr. Beeching does not influence Lord Rochdale in any way to create the same chaos in the docks as has been created on the railways?

Mr. Marples: I do not think that that is worthy of the hon. Gentleman.

Dame Irene Ward: Does this mean regionalisation?

Mr. Marples: The way that it is carried out is one thing. The main thing, as I have said, is that it must be carried out in one way or another. Whether that is the way of doing it is another matter. We shall have to go into that. At the moment, before we do anything on transport, my Department is in touch with all the other Government Departments. We have a standing group going into this quite regularly. I do not know which form it will ultimately take.
May I illustrate what I mean by what I have just said? Suppose the National Ports Council decides to recommend the development of a certain area as a major cargo port. A proper examination of such a proposal must include investigating the possible expansion of local

industry and population and also its relation to the regional plans of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. We have to ask such questions as these. Is this a suitable place to stimulate growth? What will be the effect on the area's own road and transport system? That is to say, if there is a dock in a city, what will happen to the city's road and transport system? In view of the increasing load, have we adequate road and rail communications to go where the inward and outward traffics ought to go? If not, what improvements are needed?
Questions like these would have to be tackled in considering any major port development in any area. For coping with these problems what we need, and what we shall get, are machinery and procedures which will be flexible, forward-looking, and, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward), effective, whatever they may be. Major developments at the link points in our transport system must be properly keyed in to the needs of industry and commerce and our general social and economic policy.
At this point, I come to the ports themselves. My hon. and gallant Friend and I have been struck, on going round the ports, by the paucity of statistical information on certain points and the difference in standards of statistical information between different ports. One of our chief tasks will be to study the particular problems of these ports. But to do this we must have adequate statistical information, not only from port authorities, but also from the major users of the ports. Full information must be before us if the correct decisions are to be made.
I must be frank with the House and say that there is no disguising the fact that at the moment statistical information is not adequate for those decisions. Three examples of this lack of information are mentioned in the Rochdale Report: first, the turn-round of ships, secondly, the movement of goods, and, thirdly, comparative costings. There are many other deficiencies in statistical information.
When we have got that information, and when it is in a standard form—if we are comparing one port with


another, we must compare like with like—it will clearly be necessary to co-ordinate the information with the needs of other users of statistics, particularly statistics relating to traffic flows. I propose, therefore, when we come to legislation, to ask the House to give me wide powers to require the provision of specific information.
This is perhaps the time at which I should emphasise that Section VIII of the Rochdale Report should not be regarded as a blueprint for the national plan of investment and organisation. The Section should rather be regarded as illustrative. There is a wide variety of possible patterns of organisation and development, and not until the Minister of the day has heard all the arguments concerning a particular port can he expect to find the right answer for that port. In other words, the Minister ought to wait until the complete information is assembled and laid before him in a form which is digestible. Until then he ought to hold back on any judgment regarding any port.
At this stage of our progress, what I am sure we should concentrate on are broad national questions of principle. If I may say so to the House and to those Members who are interested in ports in their constituencies, which is quite understandable, this is the reason why I have refrained from discussing the merits of individual ports at this stage. The time for that will come later.

Mr. Robert Cooke: Can my right hon. Friend say something about his views on the general principle of municipally-owned ports?

Mr. Marples: I mentioned the ownership of ports in the earlier part of my speech before, I think, my hon. Friend was in the Chamber. I dealt with ports, whatever their ownership. I said that they would all be treated alike. It is within the recollection of the House that I said that. Municipally-owned ports will be treated the same as ports owned by the British Transport Docks Board, the same as a public authority, such as the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. There will be no distinction. No preference will be shown to any of them.
I come to the need for legislation. We intend that the National Ports Council will start functioning in the immediate

future. However, I must point out to the House that it will not be able to discharge the full range of its functions until Parliament has given the Government and the Council the necessary statutory powers. For this purpose, the Government intend, during next Session, to introduce a Bill in which those powers will be sought. The two primary objectives of the Bill will be, first, to put the National Ports Council on a statutory basis and to give it the necessary powers to exercise its functions of advice and regulation effectively, and, secondly, to ensure that the Minister has effective powers of capital expenditure control.
There will be many other things in the Bill, including provisions relating to statistics and port charges. As to charges, my own view is that the Rochdale Committee made a good case for less central control. At present, port authorities are given too little discretion and the machinery which they have to put into operation to vary their charges is cumbersome and time-wasting. I am certain that we must make this much more efficient, in the interests of individual ports. In general, I think that we should abolish the present statutory restrictions on port authorities in the regulation of their charges, subject to certain safeguards by way of appeal.
These are highly technical questions, and this is not the occasion to go into more detail on them. There will be full consultation with the Dock and Harbour Authorities Association and other representative organisations on this and other aspects of the proposed legislation.
I want to say something about the importance of research. We fully share the view expressed by the Report on the need for more research, both technical and operational. This is an important and urgent matter. I must confess to the House that we have not yet come to any final conclusion about the kind of studies which are needed and how they ought to be carried out. The first move is to carry out reconnaissance so that we can get a complete picture about the technical and operational research which is going on already and a list of who is doing what.
It is a little complicated at the moment. So many different people are doing so many different aspects of this research that I feel we must get a comprehensive


list before we can decide what to do. My right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council, after consultation with Lord Rochdale and myself, has arranged for such an investigation to be made. The need for economic research on particular problems is clearly a matter on which I shall expect to receive the advice of the National Ports Council.
We shall be introducing legislation next Session, and this is the right point of time for hon. Members to express their views. This is a much better point of time than on a Bill for hon. Members to say what they think ought to be done in principle so that the Government can weigh very carefully the views of both sides of the House before they frame legislation, which, I hope, will be done during the Summer Recess.
There are many facets of the port problem that I have not touched on in my speech—to name only one, questions affecting the organisation of labour in the ports. It is quite deliberate on my part that I have not done that, because I thought there was a great deal of wisdom and a great deal to argue about in what the Rochdale Committee has to say on this and on other port problems.
I should like the House to give me its views because, as I have said before, this is the time for those views on the general questions. I hope that we shall have a really useful debate on the broad issues of organisation and national planning for our ports. I am sure that I have the agreement of both sides of the House when I say that this is essentially a case of management and organisation, and each case should be treated on its merits. I hope that we shall not generate any fierce heat, but rather a lot of very clear intellectual argument on the merits of the case.
What we want, simply, is to find the best ways of bringing our ports to a state of operational efficiency which is adequate to handle our import and export trade, which may well have doubled by the time we reach the 1980s. Therefore, we must take a forward look and think how, if we are to double that, we must look at our ports and take effective action before that time.
Throughout my speech I have concentrated on the rôle of the Government and I make no apology for having done so.

When the House is debating a Motion about the Government's decision to effect a revolutionary change in the direction of the central control of investment and organisation it is only natural that I should concentrate on the Government's function. But I do not want to leave the impression that there is not a vital rôle for port authorities, or that we do not recognise the immense importance of efficient management in the ports themselves.
Ports cannot be run, in terms of their detailed management, from the centre. The grand strategy should be from the centre, but day-to-day management and efficiency must depend on those on the spot. Our objective must be to ensure that the import and export trades, by which we live or die, are not handicapped by any deficiencies or imperfections at the link points of our transport system—and the ports are one of the most important link points.
To achieve this we need not merely a wise and firm lead by the Government, but a complete partnership with the port authorities. In the last resort, the future of our ports will depend to a very large extent on those who work in or through them—whether as operators, employers, workers or users. This is amply illustrated by the fact that two-thirds of the Rochdale Committee's recommendations were directed not at the Government, but at the various bodies and organisations concerned with port working.
The Government are determined to make a success of the national ports plan. We shall succeed in this objective only if we can secure the fullest co-operation of all the many interests which will have to work together. If we do not achieve that co-operation I do not think that we will succeed. If we get that co-operation we will, together, make modernisation more than a mere word.

Mr. Costain: I hope that my right hon. Friend intends to say something about the Channel tunnel proposals. Is it fair that hon. Members should discuss ports without going into this matter?

Mr. Marples: When answering a Question recently in the House I said that the report on this matter had not yet been received. I doubt whether I could make a useful pronouncement on this subject before the report is received and studied.
Modernisation means change and change means upsetting quite a number of interests. The curious thing is that everyone agrees with modernisation and change in principle, but tries to slaughter it in practice if it affects any interests with which they are concerned. I suppose that that is understandable. I honestly believe that unless we modernise our ports and improve our turn-round—and so achieve more efficiency from the import and export point of view—we will not succeed as a trading nation. I hope that we shall get the co-operation of the local port authorities and, via the National Ports Council, succeed in achieving the modernisation which we so badly need.

4.24 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: Hon. Members receive many voluminous reports on a wide range of subjects. If we are honest, we must admit that our first reaction to many of these documents which are often lengthy and complex, is that of a sinking feeling. However, second thoughts on the subject, after studying a report, usually leads one to admiration for the skill, industry and patience of those responsible for preparing it and gratitude for the light that has been thrown on the subject under review. I would certainly not exclude from these remarks the civil servants who are largely responsible for putting into shape the mass of material that is collected and for finally presenting the report in good and readable English.
The Rochdale Report is outstanding in all these respects. It is comprehensive and clear and its recommendations broadly commend themselves to the House. We are all grateful to Lord Rochdale and his colleagues and to those who combined to bring the Report before the House and the public.
Our need for good dock facilities is obvious. We are an industrial nation that must export a high proportion of our products to survive and, in turn, import much of its food requirements and raw materials. The speed and cost at which our goods can be sent overseas and others imported has a significant effect upon our competitive position in the world and, therefore, on our general prosperity. With this in mind, the disclosure of the inadequacy of our present port facilities in the Rochdale Report—inadequacy

both for our present requirements and, more particularly, for coping with the expected traffic in about twenty years' time—is alarming. This presents a sharp challenge to everyone concerned: the port authorities, those who work in the ports, and particularly the Government.
The Rochdale Committee points out that apart from remedying the serious deficiencies in our existing port arrangements, the capacity of our ports must be increased substantially. It says, moreover, that plans for affecting this must have high priority and that the necessary schemes must be drawn up without delay. The problem which faced Lord Rochdale and his colleagues was in many ways similar to that which faced Dr. Beeching and the British Railways Board—except that Lord Rochdale's point of departure and the general approach of his Committee were not, of course, that of the loss falling on the Exchequer and how to reduce it. Both the Rochdale Committee and Dr. Beeching's investigation were concerned with industries the facilities of which had been adequate for bygone days, but were inappropriate to the needs of today.
Both investigations have come to similar conclusions; that a policy of concentration is necessary. With that general principle of concentration we have no disagreement. Our quarrel with Dr. Beeching's detailed proposals is that no account is taken of extraneous important social and economic factors vitally affecting national welfare. Such factors should also be weighed when decisions are made arising from the Rochdale Report. Groupings, the development of certain ports and the closure of others, may have a serious effect on our economy and society generally. The prosperity of townships, the welfare of communities, the prospects of development districts, may be severely damaged by proposals to be made by the National Ports Council and either rejected or accepted by the Minister. It is essential, therefore, that as well as the efficiency, viability, or capacity of any particular dock these social matters should be taken into account before any final decisions are made.
In his speech the Minister said that this general principle is accepted by the Government. That principle is, in short, that the national aspects—the total


social benefits involved, to use a fashionable expression—are as relevant to any scheme of grouping, amalgamation or reshaping of the ports as they are to the reshaping of the railways.
The central theme of the Report is the setting up of a central body, which the Minister proposes to call the National Ports Council, to prepare plans on a national bask for the development of our ports. I propose only to speak on that theme, in order to leave time for the large number of hon. Members who have a greater experience of the detailed workings of the ports than I have, and for the many hon. Members representing constituencies in which the docks play an important part.
The principle of the national planning of our ports has been accepted by the Minister, but I must point out to the House that this recent recognition by the Conservative Party of the need for the central planning of our resources is one of the most remarkable phenomena in British politics. A few years ago, those of us who advocated this were scorned and derided as impractical Socialist theoreticians and dogmatists, and ridiculed, it will be remembered, as people who believed that"Whitehall knows best". The desirability of national planning is now admitted by the Government, and its application to our docks is only the latest example—the N.E.D.C. was another, and there are many more. We very much welcome this deathbed repentance.
I must also remind hon. Members of something else. The Minister now commends to the House this proposal for the national planning of our docks as a brave new conception which Lord Rochdale and his colleagues have put forward and which the Minister has accepted; that this is consistent with the new Conservative philosophy, and an example of what Conservatives want to do in the 'sixties and 'seventies.
The fact is, as the Rochdale Committee pointed out, that this is no new conception at all. Paragraph 140 of the Report states:
We are conscious that this is not a strikingly original thought.
The Labour Government legislated for this in Sections 66 and 68 of the 1947

Transport Act. Those sections provided for a scheme—any scheme—to be submitted by the British Transport Commission to the Minister which would give the Minister power to plan the ports on a national scale, encourage their development where they should be developed, and control them in the national interest as he might think best and as Parliament might endorse.
Every single power which the new Council is to possess, and which the Minister now commends to us, was included by the Labour Government in their 1947 Act.

Mr. Marples: Then why were they not implemented?

Mr. Strauss: I will give the right hon. Gentleman the answer to that. Those Sections were repealed by the Conservative Government in its notorious 1953 Act, before the Transport Commission had had time to deal with this important matter. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the 1953 Act did a variety of things which are highly objectionable. Among others, it cancelled Sections 66 to 68 of the 1947 Act.
If the right hon. Gentleman asks why such a scheme was not drawn up before the Labour Government went out of office, the answer lies in the urgent need to cope with the problems of bringing the railways back into a state of efficient activity after the war, organising the road haulage system on a national scale, and so on. Those problems were considerable, and it was obvious that the national planning of our ports could not have first priority. However, as I have said, in 1953 the Conservative Government of the day repealed the powers that the Minister now says he will ask for next Session.
Further, the 1947 Act, empowered the Minister to come to the House with any Order that he thought appropriate, and the House could have accepted it or rejected it. Any such scheme could have been put into operation a long time ago. As it is, because of the action of the present Government's Conservative predecessors, we have lost twelve critical years in which the scheme might have started to operate, and now we have to start all over again. However, the


Government, as a result of this Report—which, says in effect, that the Labour Party, in 1947, was right and that the Conservative Government, in 1953 were wrong—tell us that they are prepared to agree to the scheme, and we are very pleased.
The problem that confronted the Government was how this national planning could best be effected. They could have accepted the Rochdale Committee's proposal for an independent national port authority which would have had full responsibility for planning the ports—and whose decisions would have been final. There would have been no appeal against them.
Reading the Report, I understand why the Committee advocated that idea, but I think that the Minister is right in rejecting that solution and advancing that which is before the House today: the setting up of a Council whose task is to draw up the plans, submit them to the Minister and then survey their operation, while the responsibility for accepting or rejecting the plans rests squarely on the Minister.
That is how it should be, all the more so in view of the Government's decision—which, again, I fully endorse—that the ports requiring development should be able to borrow money, not on the market, where they might be held up through not being able to get the money at a reasonaable rate, but from the Government, on the same terms as are enjoyed by other public bodies. That being the decision, it is clear that the only person who should properly endorse a plan for the general organisation of our ports, and decide which ports should or should not be developed, is the Minister. He is wholly right in that decision.
I think that the right hon. Gentleman is also right in rejecting the proposition put forward in some quarters as an alternative—which also has some attractions—that if the Minister is to take responsibility, he could best effect it by enlarging his own docks section and do the planning and supervising of the docks through his own Ministry. There are two reasons for saying that such a suggestion is not good. The first is that it is much easier for a Minister, in the light of informed public criticism, to knock on the head and amend a scheme drawn up by a semi-independent outside body,

than to do the same to a scheme that has been drawn up in his own Ministry. The other reason is that the right hon. Gentleman's Ministry is already overburdened with responsibility on every aspect of transport, and it would be unwise to increase that burden if it possibly can be avoided.
Although the Minister yesterday announced the membership of the National Ports Council, I am not quite clear exactly how that body will function. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will later tell us whether it is the Government's view, as I think it was originally, that the members of the Council, including the chairman, should be on a part-time basis, or whether, at least, the chairman and the vice-chairman should be employed by the Council full-time. There is a case for saying that the chairman—and perhaps, the vice-chairman—should be a full-time member of the Council.
The Government have accepted the principle of estuarial groupings where these are appropriate, and I think that we would all agree that deciding which groupings are appropriate will be a most difficult task, particularly where there will be claims from the townships which are likely to suffer by the closing of ports and when representatives in this House will express strong protests. Nevertheless, I think that the principle is correct. I ask now: can the Minister give an undertaking that when groupings are to be effected and the Minister has decided finally, or may be before a final decision, that certain ports should be closed, Parliament will have an effective opportunity of putting forward its views on this matter?
This is very important. If a township is to be severely damaged—it may be a whole area—by the decision of the Minister, there must be an effective opportunity in this House for criticism and for the voicing of the views of the representatives of that township, and its representatives should have an opportunity maybe of persuading the House and the Minister to withdraw that plan and bring forward another.
The Minister has spoken about the British Transport Docks Board's ports and has told us that they are to be in the same position as every other port in the country. Those hon. Members


who have read the Report will remember that the Rochdale Committee went out of its way to commend the manner in which that Board has operated its ports over many years. It pointed out that it has turned a working loss in 1947 of £3¼ million into a working surplus of £4 million in 1961 in spite of great difficulties, one of which was the halving of our coal exports during that period.
It would be a great pity if the British Transport Docks Board has to disappear. It is suggested in the Rochdale Committee's Report that this may, in fact, happen. It is impossible at this stage to make any commment on proposals not yet before us, but I think that there will be strong opposition among many people if action is taken that will lead to the disappearance of this very effective, important body which has operated a number of ports so successfully under public ownership.
At this stage I want to ask the Minister only one question to which the Parliamentary Secretary may be able to give a reply. In the groupings that are likely to take place there may be an estuary where there is a dock owned by the British Transport Docks Board and it may be found desirable to group all the docks under one ownership. May that ownership be the British Docks Board? Will there be power to transfer to that Board other docks where such a scheme appears to be desirable? Will the Board be able to acquire more docks than it has at the moment where such a scheme is likely to lead to greater efficiency? In other words, is he suggesting that the transfer might only be away from the Docks Board to a new estuarial authority, or can it be, too, towards the Docks Board from existing port authorities? Again, I should like to ask whether there will be an effective opportunity for a full discussion in this House before any proposal affecting adversely any of these British Transport Docks Board's ports is put into operation.
The Minister today made only a brief reference to the decasualisation of labour. I make no complaint, as it is not directly his responsibility, and as I understand that negotiations are proceeding which are, so far, reasonably satisfactory and

from which he is hopeful that something good will emerge. I would emphasise that unless this problem can be effectively solved the benefits hoped to be secured by the other recommendations made in the Report may be severely limited. The Rochdale Committee itself placed great emphasis on this aspect of the problem. I am certain that, to provide this country with efficient docks that will give industry the service it requires, it is essential to have a contented, co-operative dock labour force, and the key here, of course, is establishing among the dock workers a feeling of security which will be all the more necessary when plans to merge existing dock authorities are carried out. I hope, therefore, that every effort will be made by all those responsible for speeding up the decasualisation discussions and that a satisfactory conclusion may soon be reached.
There is another aspect of this, about which no comment has been made but on which the Rochdale Committee also put much emphasis. This is an associated matter and I do not want to develop it today. It is the big reduction required in the number of port employers. To what extent has thought been given to that problem? Further emphasis is given, and I think rightly, by the Rochdale Committee, to the need for improving road access to the docks. The Committee says that it has had more complaints on this matter than any other, and anyone who has a working knowledge of the docks will strongly endorse the recommendation of the Rochdale Committee that drastic and urgent steps should be taken to deal with it.
The Committee says that it understands that many road schemes devised to relieve the presence of severe bottlenecks will not come into fruition until the end of the decade, and it goes on to say:
Plans involving major ports should be given special consideration and priority on grounds of national importance.
I should be interested to hear any further comment which the Parliamentary Secretary can make on that point, and whether he accepts that plea for priority set out in the Committee's Report. Perhaps he will tell us when he replies to the debate.
Another matter which the Rochdale Committee emphasised and which I know is in the minds of many hon.


Members is the need for the development in this country of deep water berths which we are very much lacking. The Committee point out that this is exceedingly expensive as not only have we to build the berths but we have also to provide the extensive facilities they call for. I wonder whether the Government have come to any decision on this, and whether they are in principle prepared to implement the Committee's recommendations.
There are two other matters to which I want to refer. One is that I am very doubtful about the wisdom of the view expressed in the Rochdale Committee's Report that each dock should be financially viable of itself. That, of course, is a desirable objective, but I hope that it will not be too rigidly applied and particularly that viability will not be the criterion on which will depend whether a port should be closed. Here we come again to the arguments surrounding Dr. Beeching's proposals. There are so many other factors of importance to take into account. It may well be desirable in the national interest in some cases, not as a general rule, to maintain a dock that cannot be viable, and therefore I hope that this recommendation will be accepted as a general principle but not applied too much in detail.
My final point arises from the Minister's statement today. He says that he has come to the decision that he will not in any circumstances—and I hope that I am not misquoting him—direct an improvement to be effected in a dock which may be recommended to him as desirable by the National Ports Council but which the dock authority does not want to carry out.
This is exceedingly important. Here we have a Council whose job is to survey the docks as a whole and come to certain decisions, and the decisions will be that certain docks should be developed in the national interest. The Minister may agree after taking advice. I do not say that it will happen often, but we may have a dock authority saying,"Despite all the expert advice in the Ministry and in the National Docks Council we will not carry out these changes although we would have money at a cheap rate to do so". This seems to undermine the whole principle of the national planning of our docks. We

come back to the old position of a Minister being in a situation where he has responsibility for an industry which he does not own, and where, in consequence, he is able to apply the brake but not the eccelerator.
The Minister, therefore, will have only completely negative powers and he has today announced to the world that under no circumstances will he take powers to ensure that a highly desirable dock development should take place although all the authorities concerned who have viewed it from a national angle may consider that to be necessary. This is an indefensible prospect and I hope that careful consideration will be given to it before the Bill is produced and a final decision is taken.
We may well be critical of many other aspects of the Government scheme when it emerges in legislative form, but we wholeheartedly endorse the objective of providing a national plan for the docks—which, after all, we on this side of the House did first—for merging existing authorities where a case for it can be made out, for eliminating excess capacity, and for carrying out the many other proposals in the Report designed to improve the handling capacity of the docks. Most of these schemes are overdue. Their urgent implementation is not only desirable but is a vital condition for the prosperity of the country in the coming years.

4.53 p.m.

Mr. John Howard: I do not propose to follow the speech of the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) in detail, but I should like to follow him on the point he made about the possible powers which the Minister ought to have in relation to the recommendations put forward by the National Ports Council. At present, as I understand it, the Minister has only negative powers through his financial control, in that he can refuse to implement any recommendations if he feels that they are unwise, but there do not seem to be any powers to enable him to enforce the recommendations of the Council if they are obstructed or opposed by local port trusts or estuarial authorities. I hope that my right hon. Friend will review this matter and will see that proper control is exercised from Parliament.
I should like to follow that criticism by congratulating my right hon. Friend, firstly, on appointing Lord Rochdale to consider this vital problem of our ports, secondly on getting the Report from the Committee into his hands so quickly, and thirdly on coming forward with a general acceptance of the principles on behalf of the Government which enables us to go ahead. One point in my right hon. Friend's speech was not quite clear to me. It related to safety in ports, I understood him to say that it might be necessary to enforce the installation of radar. I was not sure whether that applied to ports or whether he sought to make it obligatory on shipowners to install radar and V.H.F.
Southampton was one of the foremost ports to establish radar and a port information service with the voluntary support of shipowners. About 3,000 United Kingdom ships have installed V.H.F. equipment in the past few years. Ship owners have done this voluntarily and I think that there would be some resentment if they were compelled to install V.H.F. purely because of certain port information services and the obligation to apply for information from the port service. I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport will deal with this point when he winds up the debate.
As has been said, this Report is the result of an inquiry into the major ports of Great Britain which was undertaken to discover to what extent the major ports and harbours are adequate for present and future national needs. Inevitably the answer to that question is that they are not at all adequate and a great deal of reorganisation and realignment and modernisation is essential. Inevitably, the activities of the port of Southampton came under review and it is a source of satisfaction to all connected with that port, which I have the privilege to represent together with my hon. Friend, as I shall describe him in this instance, the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King).
The Rochdale Report has plans for major developments in the port of Southampton, and we feel that it is right that it should go on to give top priority to Southampton and Tilbury for future schemes. Both these ports have scope

for a large—and I think that the Report uses the word"significant"—increase in the number of deep-water berths to which the right hon. Member for Vauxhall referred. They are also both well situated geographically to meet the demands of the country's overseas trade.
Like the right hon. Member for Vauxhall, I was dismayed when I saw the size of the Report, but it proved to be fascinating reading. There was a penetrating analysis of the present working of the docks and of the trend of the country's trade not only immediately but in years to come. It was pointed out that the port of Southampton still handles nearly half a million passengers per annum compared with 380,000 in 1938. Freight passing through the port has increased to the point where it is third in magnitude only to freight handled in Liverpool and London. About 13·7 million tons pass through the port annually. The oil arrangements at Fawley in Southampton Water account for about 12 million tons of freight, and the balance of the trade us predominantly cargo passing to and from South Africa.
If I may make a political point, I am sure that the working conditions and prosperity of workers in Southampton would be adversely affected if some of the plans for the boycott of trade to and from South Africa, advocated by hon. Members opposite, and by the Liberal Party, were to come about. I hope that it will be borne in mind that trade is indivisible and that as soon as we boycott one aspect of trade the repercussions are difficult to assess. The Rochdale Report says that trade passing through the United Kingdom ports will double by 1980, and therefore the Report is concerned mainly with the freight problems of our major ports. In addition, the size of ships has been increasing. Between 1939 and 1961 the size of passenger ships increased by 37 per cent. and the size of tankers increased by no less Chan 82 per cent.
With the emphasis on big ships there is an even greater premium on a speedy turn round in our major ports, and if we are to handle these big ships I suggest that there are three essentials that we must look for when planning future developments of our large-scale ports. First, berths must be capable of occupying a greater length of quay. Secondly,


there must be a greater depth of water. Thirdly, there must be easy access with as little maintenance and dredging involved as possible. All these features are obvious in the port of Southampton, which possesses the additional feature of nature—the double high tide, which means that most of the docks are workable roughly for 24 hours of the day.
To handle the volume of trade foreshadowed for 1980, the Rochdale Report took the theme of the Cooper Committee in 1945, which said that it is not more ports but better ports which are needed. The need for greater port capacity has been clearly established by the illustrations I gave, and Rochdale has accepted the merits of expanding existing ports rather than creating new ones.
Apart from the three essentials that I mentioned for the accommodation of modern ships, the existing ports possess services; they possess the shore organisations of the shipping companies; warehousing; dry docks; ship repairing and refitting facilities. In addition, to qualify for expansion under modern conditions there must be modern transit sheds, adequate cranes and mechanical handling equipment, together with good communications by road and rail, with vehicle parking spaces and room for container parks and assembly areas, not necessarily within the dock area itself.
Southampton is well qualified under all these headings, with the exception of the rail services to the Midlands and the roads to London, the Midlands and the West. I know that my right hon. Friend's Department has initiated a number of road improvements which are either in hand or in prospect in Southampton itself, and these will all improve the access to the docks. The improvement of the London approach is particularly important, and the sooner the Chandlers Ford and Otterbourne by-pass on the A.33 can be begun the better for the smooth running of dock traffic.
At the moment there are no signs of any plans in the Ministry of Transport for London, Midlands or West roads to meet the criticisms which Lord Rochdale put in his Report in relation to the communications with Southampton. I think it is fair to say, therefore, that the lack of good communications in those directions needs to be remedied urgently.
The acceptance by the Government of the principles of the Report was set out, as my right hon. Friend has said, in the terms of the statement made by the Parliamentary Secretary on 6th March, 1963. These principles, plus the important rôle of Southampton, must involve far-reaching changes in Southampton, extending indeed far beyond the port and dock area. If paragraph 529 of the Report is to have any effect—this paragraph refers to the need for a major port to have a hinterland of industrial development—these changes must mean changes also in the surrounding Hampshire countryside. While such schemes as container parks and assembly areas, to which some weight is given in the Report, need not necessarily involve accommodation close to the docks, it is important in the case of Southampton to see that careful consideration is given to the planning of the 130 acres of reclaimed land within the dock area to see that it conforms with whatever recommendations the National Ports Council eventually makes.
Just as the physical features of the Rochdale Report have been welcomed by the town of Southampton, so too have the original proposals for the management and control of the port authority. After listening to my right hon. Friend today, I am not sure whether these proposals still remain in quite the form that I understood them to be, since they are clearly subject to whatever recommendations the National Ports Council may make. However, in the case of Southampton the situation ought to be fairly clear. The Southampton Harbour Board operates certain berths from which the Isle of Wight steamers and a fair amount of other traffic operate, and it is also responsible for the whole of the approach channels, for dredging and maintenance, whereas the British Transport Docks Board runs the main docks and transit sheds and is primarily responsible for foreign-going liners.
The third factor there is Trinity House, which is the pilot age authority. The Southampton pilots run their own show in Southampton. In their pilots' office there is a duty pilot who has come in from a spell of sea-going duty, and he is in an excellent position to advise shipping agents or anyone connected with freight coming into the port on


such points as when a ship can best be brought in, which side of the ship can be berthed alongside the dock, the state of the tide on which the vessel can be moved and so on. I hope that these details of working will not be disturbed, whatever type of authority is set up for Southampton.
The pilots' advice might also usefully be sought by the National Ports Council on the form in which the new docks may be developed. I am told that had the pilots' recommendations been accepted some 40 years ago, certain blunders which were then made in the construction of the docks could have been avoided. With this slight qualification on the set-up of the docks, may I say that a new, single, unified and independent authority would be welcomed by Southampton. We have visualised a port trust for Southampton on the estuarial basis, on which the shipping interests would be represented.
If I may now turn to the point made by the right hon. Member for Vauxhall on the negative and positive powers of the Minister, it may well be that the composition of these port trusts could be the key to the type of action that he has in mind. In other words, if the users of the port have a predominant number of members on the port authority, I think that they will be anxious for improvements to go forward because it must undoubtedly be to their benefit for the port to be improved as quickly as possible. In my view, and certainly in the view of the people concerned in Southampton, the body should be locally controlled and quite independent of the British Transport Docks Board or any other central body in London.
The dock authorities and the users did not particularly like Lord Rochdale's original proposals to set up a National Dock Authority, and I am sure the present scheme will come very much closer to their own ideas of the correct way of dealing with the problem of the future of these ports.
A port of the magnitude of Southampton needs a skilled labour force, and I support the remarks which have been made about decasualisation in the docks. I am sure the sooner we can press ahead with that reform the better. Skilled ship repairers also are essential. The situation in Southampton is a little diffi-

cult at present because of the seasonal fluctuations in demand. Perhaps the development of cargo work foreshadowed in the Report will make for a more even flow of work in the docks and obviate the present seasonal difficulties.
I hope that the Government will realise the importance of supporting shipbuilding and ship repairing based on vital ports such as Southampton. I ask my right hon. Friend to bear in mind that by extending dock facilities in areas of high unemployment we may make some places which are already too dependent upon shipbuilding and ship repairing even more dependent, so that, if there is a further contraction in the building of ships, their present employment problems will only be accentuated.
The keynote of the Report is urgency. We have considered whether the National Ports Council will have adequate powers to execute its plans, and there seems to be some doubt about whether this will, in fact, be so. I should like to know, for Southampton, whether the £1¼ million scheme for a new passenger and cargo terminal at 38 and 39 berths in Southampton Old Docks will be begun this year, as was stated by the Chairman of the British Transport Docks Board. Also, I should like to know whether the £150 million of capital mentioned in paragraph 626 of the Report will be forthcoming in the immediate future, particularly the £50 million allocated to the four major schemes, of which Southampton is to be one.
Having persuaded my right hon. Friend to modify the Transport Act to safeguard coastal shipping, may I put to him a question about our small ports? As I understand it, the small ports are to be placed under the National Ports Council. To what extent can these ports in areas such as Northern Scotland, North Cornwall and Devon be developed to replace the railway freight services which may be withdrawn? In other words, are there prospects for increasing the coastal services, particularly those for seaborne coal?
My impression from the Report is that our docks compare unfavourably with docks in Hamburg, Rotterdam and Antwerp. Indeed, Lord Rochdale refers to this in paragraph 48 of the Report.


We are criticised particularly on the score of dependability of service and speed of turn-round. Various reasons are offered, notably good industrial relations and the absence of restrictive practices in those three foreign ports. I share with the Minister and the right hon. Member for Vauxhall the hope that the utmost will be done by everyone in the House, on both sides, to impress upon all concerned that the prosperity of our country, the success of our export trade and the efficiency of our docks depend upon similar conditions prevailing here.

5.13 p.m.

Mr. Walter Edwards: It is not my intention to follow the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. J. Howard), because I have no real information about the situation in Southampton. I wish not to go through the Report as a whole—it would be impossible for one to do so—but to refer in particular to the situation in the East End of London.
I have read the entire Report carefully, and I regard it as a masterly document. I have lived in the dock area of London all my life, and I have been associated intermittently with the dock industry for the past 40 years, both working in it and as a union official. I have learned quite a lot from the Report which my experience had never taught me. It is a wonderful effort on the part of these gentlemen, who, possibly, did not know much about the docks before they were asked to become members of the Committee, to have presented such a fine Report, and I give them credit for it.
On the other aspects of the Report dealing with finance and various matters apart from dock labour itself, I completely share the misgivings expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) about Ministerial control and the other points he raised. It is absolutely essential that what has been said by my right hon. Friend should be considered most carefully by the Government before legislation is drafted We might in this way save quite a lot of trouble when the time comes to consider any Measure put before us.
One part of the Report actually recommends the closing of docks, and this directly affects my constituency. Suggestions are made that some ports might

be joined together or put out of action because they are not paying, but St. Katherine Dock and London Dock are both specifically mentioned, and it is recommended that the Port of London Authority consider closing them at some future date. Most people living in London will know that St. Katherine and London Docks have a very long history and, until the war, they served very well indeed. I quite admit that, as a result of war damage, St. Katherine Dock has hardly been used since the war. It might be used for another purpose—not for a helicopter station; we do not want that there—such as allowing vessels, yachts and so on, to moor alongside the quays, as they do now.
London Dock is another matter altogether. It is a very efficient dock. It seems to me that the Rochdale Committee had the mistaken idea that the enlargement of Tilbury Dock means that we can forget about docks nearer London. I do not say that it is a foolish idea—I must not say that—but it is quite impracticable to suggest that this could be for the benefit of shipping or of the London docks. It is far better in London if the work is spread out a little instead of being done mostly down at Tilbury on the outside of London. For one thing, the dockers would have to spend a lot of time and money in travelling down to Tilbury, and, obviously, this would make them feel a bit sore unless they knew that it was really in the national interest.
I contend that the closing of London Dock would not be in the national interest. In fact, it would be against the national interest. Instead of concentrating on one particular dock, we should spread the work out as much as we can. The Port of London Authority has, I think, already pronounced its view that it would be unwise to close the dock, despite the Rochdale Committee's recommendation. I hope that whoever has to consider this matter will take into account the situation of the workers. Many dock workers live in Stepney and East London, and they do not want to travel to Tilbury every day just because a dock which could be continued is closed. It is an efficient and most essential dock for central and inner London. Tilbury Dock may be all right for distributing goods round the country, but it is wrong for ships


which have cargoes for inner London to use Tilbury Dock when London Dock is in existence from where cargoes can be more quickly dispatched and more efficiently dealt with. I ask the people responsible to bear those factors in mind before deciding on any action to close the dock.
The London County Council, with the Ministry of Transport, has authorised the widening to 60 ft. of the road which runs past the main gate of London Dock. The Rochdale Committee obviously did not know this. Although it is proposed to widen the road and work on it is expected to start in 1965, it is now proposed to do away with the dock. This is another good reason for keeping the dock in being, because the traffic facilities will be increased.
I have only two other matters to raise—the National Dock Labour Board and decasualisation. I must go into decasualisation at some length because of its great importance.
I pay tribute to the National Dock Labour Board for the great work which it is doing and to the person who thought of the idea in the first place, who, I think, was the late Ernie Bevin. As a result of the setting up of the Board, dockers' conditions are certainly not as bad as they were before the war. I was a casual dock labourer in London until 1937. I well know the conditions which existed in those days. There was no fallback pay, and if one did three-and-a-half days a week out of six one received no unemployment benefit. The setting up of the National Dock Labour Board was a great step and I want to see it continued as far as possible.
When decasualisation does come about, the need for the Board will not be as great as it is today, because if there is only a fringe of casual labour it will not be so necessary. But we should keep it going as long as possible to provide all the services which it has provided in the past and which it continues to provide. I hope that it will continue to play a valuable part for the welfare of dockers in setting up clubs, sports grounds and things like that. It would be a great thing for the industry if the Board could continue in existence.
Decasualisation has been mentioned by the Minister, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and by the

hon. Member for Southampton, Test. I speak on this matter from practical experience because, as I say, I was a casual dock worker until 1937. I am sure that everyone wants to get rid of casual labour as soon as possible and that decasualisation is bound to come sooner or later. We cannot continue with a system under which men do not know what they will earn from one week to another, who do not know whether they will get half a day's work or a day's work or whether they will earn more than the minimum amount for half a day's work. I doubt whether anyone wants to keep the casual system going.
There is a human problem here. Dockers are not rushing into accepting decasualisation. This is surprising in view of the bad old years of casual labour. I want the House and the people outside who will deal with this matter to realise the atmosphere in which casual labourers work. In some cases they are doing much better than they used to do. In other cases they are not doing as well. The basic wage is a very poor wage which can hardly keep them going. There is bound to be the fear of redundancy if decasualisation takes place. It is this fear which, I am afraid, may have a damning effect on those of us who advocate it. There is not the slightest doubt that the agitators against decasualisation will make use of the mechanical equipment which the Report proposes should be obtained, with the alterations in working conditions and men being transferred from one wharf to another. There will be the fear that, as a result of these alterations, the demand for labour will be less.
I know that the unions and the employers have been considering this matter for some time. I think that they have come to a fair amount of agreement on it, although it has not been finalised. My own union, the Transport and General Workers' Union, is strongly in favour of decasualisation and is doing its utmost to bring it about at an early date. But there are others outside our union who are not so wedded to the idea. Very heavy demands would have to be met before they would partake of the scheme.
I wish to say only this to the employers. Decasualisation will be as good a thing for them in the long run as it will be for


the men. I think that the nation also will benefit from decasualisation. I ask the employers to give the union leaders the opportunity which they desire, and which they need, to press home to their members the great advantages which decasualisation can bring to themselves, their families and their future. If the employers will assist in this matter, I am sure that the unions will be able to get their members to acquiesce in the proposal.
There have been many disputes in the past in the London docks which many of us regret, and there may be some disputes in future, but I want to make this appeal to the dockers concerning the decasualisation proposals which will be put before them. Let them listen to their union leaders and take notice of what they say. They should support their union leaders and not be misled by such bodies as the liaison committees and port committees, which consist of people employed in the docks but which have no responsibility and in many cases comprise leading Communists who have no intention of assisting in promoting the economic well-being of the country. On the contrary, they want to lower the economic wealth of the country. I ask the dockers to bear these factors in mind when this most important question is considered.
I can assure the House that the London docker is one of the finest workers to be found anywhere, and when this National Ports Council scheme comes into being I really believe that the future of the dock industry is going to be something that even Ernie Bevin did not dream of 20 years ago. There is a wonderful future for the industry. I wish the proposal of the Rochdale Committee, with certain reservations, every success when it comes to be put into operation. 5.30 p.m.

Mr. Raymond Gower: I echo the praise given by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Marples) and by the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) to the quality, the power and the format of the Rochdale Report. I am glad, like others who have spoken, that my right hon. Friend has indicated so early his acceptance of the need for a co-ordinated national plan.
My right hon. Friend mentioned that recently he has been round many of the ports of Europe as well as round most

of the ports in the United Kingdom. While I have only seen some of the ports in the United Kingdom in the last year or so, I also have had the benefit of seeing most of the major ports in the European countries. Like my right hon. Friend, I was impressed by the quality of the installation and the efficiency of the working at such ports as Genoa, in Italy, Marseilles, in France, Rotterdam, in Holland, Antwerp, in Belgium, and Hamburg, in Germany.
Our problem, of course, is rather different from that of those countries for various reasons. In the case of Holland and Belgium, they are, of course, relatively small countries with a very much more limited seaboard than the United Kingdom, and they are able—and are fortunate, perhaps, in some respects in being able—to concentrate much of their new capital investment in each case into one port—Belgium into the port of Antwerp and Holland into the port of Rotterdam.
Similarly, Germany, a much larger country, has for its size a comparatively short seaboard and is able to rely predominantly on the magnificent port of Hamburg, and it is able to concentrate a huge part of its capital investment into that port. For historic reasons, although France and Italy have very long seaboards, they have never had the vast sea-going mercantile marine and overseas trade opportunity which this country has had—certainly not for several generations. Both countries have been able to manage with fewer ports, and thus it is that much of the new investment in Italy is attracted to Genoa and in France to one or two major ports.
Our problem is, therefore, greater than it would otherwise be in the sense that we have to provide for the modernisation and increased efficiency of far more ports than do any of the countries which I have mentioned. This fact enhances the urgency of our problems. I hope, therefore, that my right hon. Friend will reconsider what he has said about his disinclination to intervene should there be any dispute between the National Ports Council and the local port authorities, because it seems to me that this challenge to our efficiency and to our modernisation is on such an enormous scale that we cannot afford to


have the national plan thwarted by, perhaps, some local shortsightedness in this respect.
I appreciate—and no doubt this is at the back of my right hon. Friend's mind—that to work the plan efficiently he must have the maximum of local co-operation. His National Ports Council must invite every co-operation. But should there be no possibility of such co-operation, cannot my right hon. Friend say that there must be some reserve power which he will keep and which will be enshrined in the legislation which he has promised us?
There is one other point that I wish to make concerning the personnel of the Council which has been mentioned, which my right hon. Friend announced yesterday and which appears in Hansard. Some time ago I brought to my right hon. Friend's notice the fact that various bodies in South Wales were anxious that there should be a Welsh representative on the Council. My right hon. Friend pointed out that it was not to be on a territorial basis in the United Kingdom. I accept reluctantly the fact that there are two sorts of committees in this country, one which is set up on a territorial basis and the other which is not.
If the committee is set up on a territorial basis then I expect, naturally, to see a predominance of English members, with representatives from Scotland, Ulster and Wales. If it is not on a territorial basis, then I look for English and Scottish representatives but not for Welsh representatives. Therefore, in this case I find what I look for. I find that there are many English representatives and, sure enough, a Scottish representative from the Commercial Bank of Scotland.
I ask my right hon. Friend to look to the one or two appointments still under consideration and to include at least one representative from Wales. Wales has made a very splendid contribution not only in the matter of ports, but to our whole shipping and mercantile marine. The seaways of the world have been bestrode by ships which have been captained by Welsh captains. There is also the notable contribution to ship owning and ship carrying from Welsh ports in the great days of coal, which is something

with which my right hon. Friend is quite familiar.
I now turn to a very special problem, and I am very grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me this opportunity to take part in the debate. While, as I say, I find a deal of merit in the main proposals of the Committee, I quarrel most emphatically with it in the advice which it offers on the port of Barry. In their history of about 75. years the docks at Barry have had an astonishing record of achievement in peace and war. Until the end of the Second World War, Barry was a coal port par excellence and much of the coal from the South Wales coalfield was taken all over the world from its docks. In its greatest years Barry's coal exports reached enormous proportions, and older people can recall one period just before the First World War when some 11 million tons of coal left the Barry docks in a single year.
That state of affairs has passed away, perhaps for ever. But I quarrel with those pessimistic prophets who say that the coal trade will never be revived. I share the conviction of Lord Robens, the Chairman of the National Coal Board, who said recently that Barry will have an important part to play in the increased coal exports which he envisages.
I am satisfied that the Rochdale Committee recommendations which threaten the very existence of the Port of Barry offend against some of the very criteria which that Committee has adopted for the basis of its conclusions in other respects. The House will be aware that the Committee recommended—as set out in paragraph 551 of its Report—that the ports of Cardiff, Barry and Swansea be placed under the control of a new public trust authority which should also be responsible for conservancy and piloting. The Committee then made the astonishing recommendation that the trade of Barry should be transferred gradually to Cardiff—

Mr. George Thomas: Hear, hear.

Mr. Gower: I will come to that and answer the hon. Member in a moment.
As I was saying, the Committee recommends that the trade of Barry should be transferred gradually to Cardiff with a view to the eventual closure of the docks at Barry. And the only real reasons which the Committee advanced


for this proposal appear to me not only inadequate, but misconceived.
Those inadequate reasons are set out in Chapter 37, paragraph 547, of the Report. The Committee refers to the existence of surplus capacity in the Bristol Channel South Wales Ports, and it refers to the need to rationalise, concentrate and to reduce the excess capacity, and that is all. That is the only reason given in the Report for this recommendation, merely that in the Committee's view there is some excess capacity—and perhaps it is not surprising that this should be the case. How should it be otherwise? The Committee's visit to Barry was brief in the extreme, so brief as to appear contemptuous and nugatory.
The Committee appears to have made no real study of the nature of the excess capacity at the South Wales ports and to have paid scant, if any, heed to the relative merits of various ports and their facilities. The fact that the Transport Commission, in its commercial judgment, has continued in recent years to show confidence in the docks at Barry by capital expenditure on a considerable scale appears to have been ignored and to have influenced the Rochdale Committee not at all.
Although in paragraph 548 of its Report the Committee implies that the trade of Barry can be redeployed elsewhere, notably in Cardiff, it made no inquiry whether the established firms at Barry, some of them not in British ownership, were prepared or even able to transfer that trade and their installations to the port of Cardiff. Indeed, some of those firms have since stated that they cannot do so.
I hesitate to express publicly my conviction about the reasons for the Committee's recommendation, but after making the most exhaustive inquiries I am convinced that the Committee was influenced solely by the excess capacity, as it described it, in the South Wales ports and, therefore, adopted what appeared to the Committee to be a rather neat, simple formula for getting rid of that excess capacity, namely, the sacrifice of this port of Barry, without reconciling that advice with the merits of the case.
I should like to summarise some of the advantages of Barry Docks, many of which are certainly not possessed by its

neighbours in other docks in South Wales. First, there is the deep-water entrance, which confers obvious benefits, and the availability of deep-water berths. Other Members have stressed the value of deep-water berths; Barry possesses them. Negligible dredging cost is needed to keep the docks in operation, in marked contrast to most of the other South Wales ports. For example, more than £1 million a year is required to keep the port of Cardiff in operation, whereas Barry costs practically nothing.
Also important is the fact that the docks at Barry are operational for several hours at a time. They are not as dependent upon the tide as most of the other ports on the South Wales seaboard. This is vitally important in the sort of trade that is now being developed at Barry with the importation of perishables and fruit.
Good road and rail access, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. John Howard) referred as an important factor, is available at Barry and is being improved rapidly. The expeditious turn-round of ships at Barry has led firms like Geest Industries, for example, to prefer to establish themselves at Barry rather than at any of the other South Wales ports or elsewhere in the British Isles. Indeed, they experimented at several ports, including other ports in South Wales, before deciding on Barry, and one of the chief things which influenced them was the speedy turn-round of ships.
Since the war, labour relations in the South Wales ports have, I suggest, been rather better than in most parts of the United Kingdom and the record shows that labour relations in Barry have been as good as anywhere else in South Wales.
The fact that the docks at Barry do not involve the British Transport Docks Board in an operating loss is another important factor.
There is a recommendation that docks generally should be made economic and that those which are not run economically should be reconsidered. In the case of Barry, however, the Docks Board has stated officially that the docks are not conducted at an operational loss. Indeed, they earn a small operating profit. This was one of the main criteria which the Rochdale Committee chose to prescribe,


yet in defiance of this criterion the Committee recommends the possible closure of these docks.
Then there is the fact that the combined efforts in recent years of the British Transport Docks Board, the Barry Borough Council and local industrialists have promoted a significant increase in the trade of the port and developments of new kinds of dock traffic. The port of Barry, indeed, provides a useful example to many other ports in the United Kingdom of what can be achieved by patient, sustained effort
Even in the limited period which has elapsed since the Rochdale Committee reported, the trade of Barry Docks has increased by more than 30 per cent. All these and other advantages and favourable factors and trends have been set out in an admirable booklet prepared by the Barry Borough Council, which is already in the hands of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Welsh Affairs. Some time ago, in January, I ventured to tabulate some of those advantages in my Motion No. 54, entitled"Barry Docks", then tabled by me.
There are other cogent, urgent reasons which call for an early decision to reject the advice of the Rochdale Committee in the case of Barry. In the past few weeks, the National Dock Labour Board, to which the hon. Member for Stepney (Mr. W. Edwards) referred, has acknowledged the increase in the docks traffic at Barry by approving an increase in the dock labour force at the port. This is another official acknowledgment that the trade trend at Barry is upwards. In how many docks of the United Kingdom has anything like that happened in recent months? In how many docks in Britain has it been necessary over the last two years or so to enlarge the labour force? I suspect, not in many.
In recent years, the fruit importing firm of Geest Industries, which is associated with a company in Holland, has established itself at Barry with regular shipments to the port. The company has built its own installations and depot at the dockside. Moreover, these shipments are tending to increase. Only last weekend, when I visited my constituency, I found that two Geest banana boats had

arrived almost together. This increase in traffic poses other problems, which are being tackled with energy and ingenuity. Cory Bros., Limited, Mobil Oil, Limited, and Isherwoods, Limited, have all established oil terminals at the port of Barry in recent years.
The new installations erected by Cory Bros, alone are valued at about £1 million. Already, Mobil Oil, Limited has expended nearly £300,000 on its new installations at Barry and contemplates further expenditure of the order of £200,000, representing a total of about £½millon. In the case of Isherwoods, Limited, £60,000 has been spent on new installations and immediate plans are designed to involve another £30,000 expenditure.
To deal with another sort of industry, the Distillers, Limited, group of companies is firmly established at Barry and one of its companies, British Resin, Limited, has installed a pipeline at a cost of £30,000 to bring in liquid raw materials. Distillers, Limited, also uses the docks for the import and export of resins and expansion proposals are again under consideration.
Another example is that of Joseph Rank, Limited, a company which is long established at Barry Docks. This company has a long lease from the British Transport Docks Board, including a responsibility by the Board to provide Ranks with quay space at Barry Docks. This quay space is adjacent to the flour mill. In recent years, the Rank company has, in consequence, completely modernised its flour mill at great capital cost to make it one of the most modern flour mills in Europe. Ranks contemplate substantial increases in grain shipments to Barry Docks, and the prospect of these shipments is enhanced by the new animal feeding-stuffs plant which it has erected at Barry. It is surely very significant that most of these companies have stated publicly that they cannot contemplate any transfer to Cardiff or to any other port.

Mr. G. Thomas: While I much appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is fighting for his own constituency, may I ask: does he not think that it would be better if he advanced the claims of Barry without seeking to denigrate his neighbours in Cardiff?

Mr. Gower: The hon. Gentleman thought that the trade of Barry should be moved to Cardiff, and that is solely why I mentioned Cardiff. He really invited a reply from me. However, the point I wish to make is that it is significant that many of these companies have stated publicly that they cannot contemplate any transfer to Cardiff or to any other port. Another company, J. O. Williams and Co., Limited, has stated that it cannot carry on its pit prop import and storage elsewhere as it finds Barry Docks most suitable and least expensive.
By considerable expenditure in recent years, and by present declaration, the Docks Board has shown its confidence in the future of these docks and its desire to continue their operation. In recent months Lord Robens, Chairman of the Coal Board, has stated that the port of Barry should have an important rôle to play in the increased coal shipments which he envisages.
Only on 13th March last Sir Arthur Kirby, Chairman of the Docks Board said at Cardiff:
The aim of the Docks Board will be to make effective use of facilities which are not obsolete and which can become part of national planning. I hate to think that under any plan we would have to relinquish the excellent deep water facilities which exist at Barry. This, it seems to me, would be most wasteful.
About 2,300 or 2,500—I do not know the exact figure—persons owe their employment directly or indirectly to these docks. Some firms in the port have declared that their development plans are held up only by the uncertainty created by the unfortunate inclusion of this recommendation in the Rochdale Report. I implore my right hon. Friend to intervene to remove this uncertainty, to enable the Docks Board to continue to employ these docks and to keep the facilities for which Lord Robens foresees a real future, to permit the various firms to proceed with their plans for expansion, and to allow the people of Barry and the surrounding area to continue to serve the community as they have done so magnificently in times of peace and war.

5.53 p.m.

Mr. A. J. Irvine: The Minister rightly forecast that back benchers' speeches in this debate would raise constituency points and

undoubtedly the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) has given us a persuasive example of that. He raised local issues with which he will not expect me to deal.
In Merseyside although the value of the Rochdale Report was recognised, the amount of work which had gone into it and the skill with which its findings were presented, its recommendations, I think it is fair and true to say, were received with some disappointment. Among the main ports of the country it is recommended in the Report that the highest priority should be given to development in Tilbury and Southampton, and it is added that high priority should be given to Leith and Teesport. Of course we have to consider the varying claims of these ports, bearing always in mind what we conceive the national interest to be. There is no element, in the view I present, of begrudging advance and development to these great ports. None the less, it was observed on Merseyside that it was these other ports which were selected for the highest priority, and, even among the ports given less priority for development, the language used relative to Merseyside was, as it seemed to many of us, rather discouraging. It was said of Glasgow, for example, that
effort…should…be concentrated on the modernisation and improvement of existing facilities".
That appears in the summary of recommendations, in paragraph (123). The Report does not go so far even as that when it is speaking of the treatment to be recommended for Merseyside. There the language used is this:
effort…should…be concentrated on making the most of existing facilities".
The House will observe, I have no doubt, the nuance and that that is an expression of intention which is not satisfactory to Liverpool people or to people on Merseyside.
It will be seen that the recommendations in the Report to which I have thus far referred put forward a policy for the distribution in different parts of the country of new port development which appears to be wholly inconsistent with the professed Government policy of attracting industry to the north of England rather than to the south.
As I have indicated, many of us in a debate of this kind will wish to make,


up to a point, special pleas for our constituencies and constituency interests, but, as I have indicated, we are surely under a duty to ensure that when we do that we try to justify our arguments by reference to the national interest; and in arguing that the Report gives to Liverpool relatively too little priority I have of course in mind the interests of the economy of the country as a whole.
There is first the point, as it seems to me, that shippers want to use the ports which they already know. It is of great importance for a company, in considering where a cargo or a vessel will be allocated, to determine whether there is a tradition of good will and efficient handling in the experience of shippers at a particular port. In this connection it should be remembered that, after the port of London, the port of Liverpool has an easy lead over all the other ports in the country in the scale of its imports and exports of foreign cargo traffic. In principle, I suggest to the House that what is clearly desirable is to get a good return from new development in a port and we are more likely to get that in a port where the going is, so to speak, already good; there is much more likely to be a good return from investment and port development in a port of that character than in a port where trading relations and shipping experience may be less satisfactory.
In so far as Liverpool is concerned, it is not the case that we are hanging on in that great port to a lead established in past years and which is in process of being diminished, because in the year ended July, 1962—last year—the total tonnage of cargo entering and leaving the port of Liverpool was just short of £23 million and the tonnage of vessels was just under £59 million, and these figures represent the second highest figure ever achieved in the history of the port. All the evidence goes to show that new accommodation in Liverpool is attracting new tonnage and that the policy of expansion and enterprise which the port has followed has been justified up to the hilt by what has subsequently occurred. The great Langton-Canadian Improvement scheme is a case in point illustrating that. We now have berths on the Mersey equipped with every possible aid for the safer handling of ships and freight.
It has always seemed to me that the prosperity of the shipping of our country as a whole depends to a unique degree upon international co-operation—the dovetailing and fitting in of international shipping demands—and if a shipowner can point to the quality of diplomacy as being possessed by him in his armoury, that is so much the better for us all. The operation of the liner conference system, in my view, illustrates this fact, and it is to be hoped that the development of similar schemes to cover tankers and tramps will take shape and proceed rapidly.
When I mention the matter of the liners' conference, I have in mind that the conference system operates at its best and to the greatest benefit from the British point of view—to the greatest benefit of British ports—when a port has three things to offer. It is of great importance to those who in the conference determine the allocation of cargo and the allocation of terminals for freight to be able to say of a certain port, first, that it is a port which has built up a vast capital in terms of past experience, good will and traditional treatment of foreign vessels and foreign cargoes; secondly, that it possesses first-class existing facilities, and, thirdly—and this is the point to which the House should have particular regard in this debate—that it is prominent in current development and in planned future development.
What I think is so unfortunate in the lack of emphasis in the Report upon development in Merseyside—

ROYAL ASSENT

6.1 p.m.

Message to attend the Lords Commissioners:

The House went:—and, having returned;

Mr. Speaker reported the Royal Assent to:
1. Protection of Depositors Act 1963.
2. Town and Country Planning Act 1963.
3. Stock Transfer Act 1963.
4. Local Employment Act 1963.
5. Remuneration of Teachers Act 1963.
6. Education (Scotland) Act 1963.


7. Sheriff Courts (Civil Jurisdiction and Procedure) (Scotland) Act 1963.
8. Forestry (Sale of Land) (Scotland) Act 1963.
9. British Museum Act 1963.
10. Glasgow Corporation Order Confirmation Act 1963.
11. Ministry of Housing and Local Government Provisional Order Confirmation (Bolton) Act 1963.
12. Universities of Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne Act 1963.
13. British Waterways Act 1963.
14. Marine Society Act 1963.
15. Saint Dionis Backchurch Churchyard Act 1963.
16. Saint Nicholas Acons Churchyard Act 1963.
17. Mersey Docks and Harbour Board Act 1963.
18. London County Council (General Powers) Act 1963.
19. British Railways Act 1963.

PORTS (ROCHDALE COMMITTEE'S REPORT)

Question again proposed.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. Irvine: I was endeavouring to make the point that when shippers and shipowners at a conference determine as between various ports—deciding to which ports vessels or cargoes should be allocated—they are likely to have regard not only to their past relations with these ports but also to the existing facilities, and to the level of current development and the intentions for future development. All these reveal the prospects of a port when its claims are being considered.
It is on the question of the impression given as to current development and plans for future development that the language of the Rochdale Report appears to many of us to be so discouraging, for it has the very limiting phrase
for the time being effort at both Liverpool and Manchester should generally be concentrated on making the most of existing facilities".
I have already indicated that that has disappointed Merseyside when compared with the way in which Southampton,

Tilbury and Glasgow, for example, have been treated.
I hope that, if he is able, the Parliamentary Secretary will give an assurance that this lack of emphasis on the importance of new port development on the Mersey does not reflect the Government's view of the relative importance of development of Merseyside compared with development elsewhere.
I well understand that it may not be possible at this stage to indicate how the Government react in detail to the Rochdale recommendations as between one port and another, but it would be something at least to have an assurance, if that is possible today, that the Government do not regard themselves as in any way wedded to the order of priorities set out in the Rochdale Report. If the Parliamentary Secretary felt able to go further and say that it is intended to give the highest priority to Liverpool, then obviously his observations to that effect would be welcome to Merseyside Members and to their constituents. As I have indicated, I am endeavouring to bear in mind the manifest duty we have, in pressing constituency interests, to do so reasonably and logically, if we can, in the context of the national interest.
I suggest that only a superficial view is expressed when it is said, as one sometimes hears, that the development of trade with Europe in particular is likely to give an advantage to the southern and eastern ports as distinct from those on the West Coast.
In my view of the matter, the development of pipeline communications across country is only one of many examples which may be brought forward to counter that proposition. Moreover, it is surely the case, is it not, that it is becoming increasingly clear that in all likelihood the future will see a great development of the concept of an Atlantic community, with Europe and the United States and ourselves within it all forming a great and expanding trading relation. As this occurs, Liverpool will be a veritable centre, a nodal point, of the trade of that alliance, and it is with that kind of long-term consideration in mind that I beg the Government and the Parliamentary Secretary to give the House today an assurance upon a matter which is of immense importance—that the great prospect which there is of the expansion


of trade and port facilities on Mersey-side is seized and understood by the Government, and that they are determined to do everything possible to see that advances are made in the years to come.
I wish, in conclusion, only to mention in outline one or two other points. The first point which I mention is that if ever there were a justification for financing enterprise by direct Government grants for development, it surely arises in the case of port development, for the obvious reason that the development of our ports, the improvement of unloading and loading facilities, the acceleration of the turn-round and all the rest are matters of basic importance to the economic well-being of a great trading nation. Although I recognise that it is perhaps difficult at this stage for anyone to commit himself to the view that for a particular class of development direct Government grant should be paid, I invite the acceptance of the proposition in principle that the development of dock facilities is pre-eminently the type of development which, in particular, warrants that kind of grant.
I also wish to welcome the recommendation of the Report which relates to inland transport and which was a matter to which, I am glad to say, the right hon. Gentleman the Minister attached importance in his speech moving the Motion. The recommendation is, I understand, that the new National Ports Council should be empowered to advise the Minister of Transport on inland transport questions affecting the ports. I should have liked the recommendation in the Report to have been spelled out rather more than it has been and to have been more strongly expressed.
As the right hon. Gentleman is well aware, we in Liverpool are at this time among the forefront of those engaged in large-scale planning for the future development of our city. I still think that insufficient priority is being given to the matter of road connections with the docks in the planning which is going on. That overall criticism of the planning proposals is one to which I feel bound to adhere.
The position is that we have behind us the great industrial area of Lancashire, and the freight from that great industrial area makes, on the whole, a rapid transit

to the city of Liverpool. It has a pretty free run well towards the city centre after it has crossed the city boundary. But I still think that insufficient emphasis is being placed in planning upon the last lap, which carries traffic from quite near the centre of Liverpool to the docks. The city's greatness is as a port, and the docks are its lungs, and rapid transit through the city to the river and the docks is in my view of first importance. In my view, any planning of the city centre which is dictated by circumstances other than the overriding need for rapid transit to the docks requires to be carefully watched.
This is just the kind of matter which, as I see it, if the recommendation of the Rochdale Report is carried out, will be the subject of study by the Ministry in liaison with the new port authority. It is desirable that, this should be so, but we should welcome an assurance, with specific instances in mind, such as I have mentioned in the case of Liverpool, that the intention is not merely to have a kind of doctrinal acquiesence of a planning liaison between departments but so to operate it that improvements of real practical importance may emerge.
Finally, as one who is privileged to have many dockers among his constituents, I underline the obvious importance of a contented dock labour force. I am confident that the Minister has listened with the greatest care to the observations which have been made today by my hon. Friend the Member for Stepney (Mr. W. Edwards) and others. I can speak of this from personal knowledge, although it will be widely recognised to be the case: the dockers want to play their part in the enterprise which, as I have indicated, is Liverpool's destiny. They are entitled to be protected from too-wide fluctuations in their earnings. They are entitled to be protected from an over-hazardous system of the allocation of tasks when there are great fluctuations in the volumes of cargo. All I would say is that a steady advance to effective decasualisation appears to be the answer.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stepney that, although that is the answer, it is a course to be followed, always bearing in mind that acknowledged opposition in certain quarters, which is still to be found to the principle


of decasualisation. The fact remains that, in principle, decasualisation is the answer to this problem, and I think that the work of the National Joint Council to this end, which I understand now to be in progress, is work to which we with all wish success.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. Graham Page: It is right and proper to deal with principles rather than with localities in a debate of this sort but, like the hon. and learned Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine), I can examine the principles only by reference to the examples which I know. Like him, I know Merseyside, and I am, therefore, particularly pleased to follow him. I will not repeat in detail his arguments and the case which he has put forward so well for Liverpool and Merseyside. I will only say that he put it forward far too peacefully for my liking. I think that it needs to be put forward far more forcefully.
As the hon. and learned Member pointed out, Liverpool is the second British port, handling about 25 per cent. of the value of our trade, as the Rochdale Report shows. Within that area we have all the national problems of the docks. Most important, we have the problem which forms the whole theme running through this Report—whether we should concentrate on improvements, or on new developments. That is the problem of Merseyside. The Report comes down on the side of improvements rather than of new development, and yet, on page 23, it points out that there is great pressure on both Liverpool and London.
It points to these two ports as being the exception to the rest of the country. It discards the solution of diverting the traffic to some other ports and says, in paragraph 51:
We have already suggested that there is scope for increased productivity and we believe that physical development can provide the other part of the answer"—
the physical development of a port such as Liverpool.
My right hon. Friend, in his opening speech, mentioned that major investment in the ports is a national interest. Indeed, when one looks at the cost of major development for a port such as Liverpool, and, in fact, for the whole of Merseyside, it must necessarily be a

national interest. Merseyside has spent, and intends to spend, large sums on improvement of the port, when when it comes to substantial capital expenditure it is surely a matter of national concern.
When I speak of capital expenditure, perhaps I could divide it into two classes. First, there is that expenditure which one would not at once call capital expenditure—for example, on dredging. This is of vital importance to Merseyside. On page 83, the Report points out that in the United States of America
conservancy and dredging works are often carried out by the U.S. Army Engineering Corps".
And it goes on to say that
at some major continental ports the State bears at least some of the expense of dredging.
But the Report discards this as a solution here. When one looks at the table on page 91 of the Report, this will obviously be most unfair on Liverpool, Manchester, and Cardiff, where the percentage of expenditure at those ports which goes to dredging is very high. This, surely, should be a matter of national expenditure.
Secondly, the hon. and learned Member for Edge Hill gave one or two instances where real capital expenditure is needed on Merseyside. I think that the first item should be the new dock to the north of Gladstone Dock. This comes within my constituency. There is there a wide area of land which belongs to the Docks Board, and which, if developed, would relieve the pressure on Liverpool, to which the Report refers.
From that area, where the new dock with a deep water berth could be built, there could be adequate road access. The area could include a marshalling yard for road transport. Indeed, there should be facilities for air transport as well by the construction of a helicopter station in the area. This is a site of many acres which, as I have said, belongs to the Docks Board, and is waiting for this sort of development.
I am aware of the recent expenditure by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board on the Langton Canada dock scheme; and a marvellous development it was. The Report suggests that the Docks Board should digest this before it goes on to the new development, but surely this is a defeatist way of looking at it. The Langton Canada dock scheme was


an improvement of existing docks. What is needed to relieve the pressure on Liverpool's docks is a new development with new road access.
As the hon. and learned Member for Edge Hill said, we have the opportunity there to develop the roads, I would suggest on a circular scheme around Liverpool. We have wide roads there, but when they reach the docks there are bottlenecks. There is that suitable area to the north of Gladstone Dock which could be used without any great major road construction and there is also the space there for the marshalling of goods.
It is of vital importance to the port of Liverpool that there should be an area in which the goods which come to, and go from, the port by road can be marshalled. There are railway marshalling yards, but there is nothing comparable for the lorries bringing mixed cargoes which have to go from dock to dock. Some of the lorries which arrive with mixed cargoes spend days along the docks. Surely it would be possible to provide some form of marshalling yard for road transport, something on the lines of the Manchester Quay Delivery Bureau?
In that case, it is the marshalling of the imports, but what is needed on Merseyside is a lorry marshalling yard for exports, and then for the Docks Board itself to undertake the distribution to the various docks by specially equipped vehicles. This has worked well the other way round with the Manchester Quay Delivery Bureau for imports, and I am sure that a satisfactory method could be worked out on Mersey-side for dealing with exports.
Those are the sort of developments which are essential on Merseyside—not mere improvements, nor mere tidying up of the present layout there, but a new deep-water berth dock with new roads to it and a new form of marshalling.
There are two other matters I wish briefly to put to the Minister. The first concerns port charges. There is a sort of mystique about the charges for goods being imported and exported, certainly so far as the Liverpool docks are concerned. The complicated structure of the charges, and the innumerable different types of charges that have to be

paid on any packet of goods going across the docks really are fantastic. It beats me how anybody understands what he has to pay to get goods across the docks. One needs a lifetime of study at this. Surely it can be simplified. It is known that this has driven business away from the Liverpool docks to Avon-mouth and other ports.

Mr. Webster: Hear, hear.

Mr. Page: My hon. Friend says"Hear, hear". I am sure that he will confirm that traffic has been driven away from Merseyside to the area of his constituency on that account, and I hope that something can be done to simplify the charges.
My second point is about dock labour. Reference has been made to the decasualisation of labour. It is a long word to use, but it merely means that the men ought to have a contract with an employer, and surely the time has come for this to be fully introduced. To anyone who goes into the pens on the docks early in the morning when the dockers are being taken on, it seems incredible that we can go on treating human beings like cattle. I did not know this until about twelve years ago, when I asked to go into one of the pens to watch what was happening. I was shocked to find that human beings were treated in this way. It is tradition, and the men perhaps do not notice it as much as a visitor does when he first goes into the dock pens.
Generations of dockers have known this practice for many years, but surely we can now institute a more humane system for the employment of dockers, and encourage the making of contracts with employers which will give the dockers something more than" fallback pay" when there is no ship for them to unload or load. These contracts should be undertaken by large firms, and not as they are at present in Liverpool by the small firms, of stevedores or lumpers, for loading the goods or discharging them respectively. It should be undertaken by large, responsible firms, with contracts given to the dock workers.
This is long overdue. I am sure that we can overcome the difficulties relating to redundancy, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will continue, with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour, to


urge that decasualisation should be brought about as quickly as possible.
The whole of an area like Merseyside depends upon the value and volume of the goods which go across the docks. It is no good our talking only about development district status, and all that sort of thing, and about introducing new industry and commerce into an area like Merseyside. What we must do is to encourage—not revive; the industry is alive as it is—the development of the basic industry of the area, the docks. I am sure that we can best do that by undertaking new developments, rather than by merely trying to tidy up the present structure by way of piecemeal improvements.
That is why I strongly urge my right hon. Friend not to accept that part of the Report which recommends that there should be no new developments in Liverpool at present. There is an area there for development. There is an area for a deep water berth, which is vitally needed in the national interest. I hope that my right hon. Friend will see that this development is undertaken.

6.41 p.m.

Mr. James H. Hoy: The hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) said that the dockers might not notice, so much as an outsider, the degrading process of their being collected together in pens when being chosen for work because they are used to it. I can tell him that although they are used to it they dislike it intensely. They resent it. It is like unemployment was in the old days. They got used to it, but they never liked it, because it was persistent. We can disabuse our minds of any idea that the dockers do not resent this form of treatment. Like every other employee, they look forward to the day when they will have a contract of service. They are willing to work if they are needed, and if they are not needed they are entitled to compensation in the form of wages, because their labour is always available. We must adopt that system fairly soon.
The Minister said that the Rochdale Report had laid down three things—first, that there is a real need for a national plan; secondly, that there is a need for a central planning agency and, thirdly, that there is a need for financial

control by a National Ports Council. When he said that he was met with a barrage of"Hear, hear". Hon. Members opposite may"Hear, hear", but this means planning by a central agency, and the control of a most important industry. It has always been a basic essential of the political beliefs of those who occupy these benches, and we are delighted to know that not only hon. Members opposite but the Government now accept this as the policy best suited to meet our economic needs.
The Minister realised the importance of what he was saying, because he then rushed on to deal with paragraph 218 of the Rochdale Report, and said that although the Rochdale Committee said that we should have the power of directing investment and that the Government ought to take this power to direct a local port authority to deal with it, the Government did not propose to accept that part of the Rochdale Committee's recommendations. But unless we take full control in this way, because we consider it essential for our economic well-being, we might as well not think about it at all.
When the Minister was told that this would give a local port authority the right to veto any suggestion about developments he fell back on the plea that although he had announced this decision firmly he wanted the opinion of the House, and when he had it he would be able to make a decision. I suggest that it is wrong to make a decision and then, immediately upon finding that the decision is disliked, to turf it overboard. This does not inspire confidence that the Minister will be able to deal efficiently with this great problem.
I do not want to add too many congratulations. I remember when this Committee was appointed. It presented its Report last September, and it is only today—10 months later—that the House is having an opportunity to discuss it. In those circumstances I cannot believe that the Government realised the urgency of the problem with which the country was confronted.
We feel that this is characteristic of the Minister's outlook towards shipping and allied subjects. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House viewed with some misgivings the Minister's appointment to deal with shipping, shipbuilding


and ports. They felt that he had already far too much on his plate, and that even if he were capable of doing so he did not have time to deal with this important matter.
We must realise that although we are only discussing the matter our competitors in Europe and elsewhere are carrying out works which will place our ports at a further disadvantage. When the Report was called for we had the feeling that it was because the Government felt that we were about to enter the European Economic Community and not for the reasons given by the Minister today. The Government felt that they were about to enter Europe, and they probably wanted to see that our ports were not at a disadvantage, economically or in any other way, compared with other European ports. But if it was essential to bring our ports up to date to meet the requirements of our entry into the Common Market, it is all the more important that our ports should not be less efficient now that we have been left outside the Community.
The Cooper Committee, reporting in 1945—we remember Lord Cooper with a great deal of warmth in Scotland; he was formerly a very distinguished Member of this House—said that we wanted not more ports but better ports. This view is supported by the Rochdale Committee. That having been said in 1945 by the Cooper Committee, and having since been repeated so frequently, hon. Members must consider what has been done to meet that need. If we do so we can see at a glance how badly we compare with our competitors. The Rochdale Report puts it shortly in paragraph 47, which is somewhat alarming. It says:
No single additional deep water berth for general cargo has been started since the 1930's, apart from those now nearing completion at Teesport.
That is an indictment of Government policy so far. When we remember all that is happening elsewhere we become a little frightened about the future. I want to quote at random from the Britannica Book of the Year 1963.
A new deep water quay is planned at Stavanger, Norway…New dry docks at Bassins Bordeaux, France, for larger vessels and tankers up to about 45,000 tons.
If the Rochdale Committee is talking

about anything at all, it is about facilities that could be provided to accommodate vessels of this kind.
Rotterdam, Holland, new sites and facilities are established in the Botlek area…allowing vessels up to 50,000 tons to enter. Dredging began in 1958 in Europoort which is being constructed further westward on the Island of Rozenberg at an estimated cost of £70 million.
The same could be said, as the Report says, about Genoa in Italy, where work has started on the Multedo petroleum dock to replace the present facilities at Ponte Aibya. In other words, all these countries are working new and better deep water quays and ports to meet their future needs.
We have to compare that with what is happening in this country, and for us the comparison is odious. In paragraph 49 of the Rochdale Report the case is put succinctly.
The estimated £70 million which the single great project of Europoort at Rotterdam is to cost, excluding private investment on installations, may be compared with the total of about £150 million spent on capital investment by the major British ports since the end of World War II.
These are frightening figures, though, apparently, they have not frightened the Ministry of Transport, as is evidenced by the appalling inactivity. But they must frighten hon. Members. That is the stark reality of the present situation and as a country we must tackle it without further delay.
The Rochdale Report says:
One thing that seems to us beyond doubt—we make no apology for repeating this—is that this country needs more deep water berths.
If that is so, we have to consider what we have been doing. I have put the general situation as I see it, and it is important because it affects Britain as a whole. We cannot have success in one part and despondency in others. In my constituency we have been endeavouring for three and a half years to carry out a project, but the Government, and particularly the Ministry of Transport, have not proved very helpful. That is putting it mildly.
I do not wish to make any accusation against the Parliamentary Secretary. The hon. and gallant Gentleman has been to Leith and seen the project, and the Secretary of State has been barking on the sidelines without, I am afraid, any


result. But apparently the Minister of Transport considers himself so superior that he does not even find time to hold a meeting with those concerned. This does not give us any confidence that the right hon. Gentleman is competent to make a reasonable judgment in this connection.
Regarding the project which we have at Leith, I will quote not myself but what the Rochdale Committee Report states, which the House may take as an impartial statement. In paragraph 583 the Report states:
The Leith Dock Commissioners have made proposals for a development scheme to enable larger and deeper-draughted ships to use their port, in particular the larger-sized grain ships that are increasingly being used. The proposed scheme would provide an initial improvement equivalent to the addition of four deep-water tidal berths and would make the port available to ships with draughts up to six feet greater than the present maximum; the Western Harbour would be made capable of accepting ships of a draught of 35 feet. This would provide facilities for large dry cargo bulk carriers superior to any at present available on the East Coast of Britain and would put the port on more equal terms with North-West European ports, without the expense of constant large scale dredging operations. The scheme would also enable future berths to be added in the Western Harbour at a minimum cost We have examined these proposals carefully and consider that the scheme, estimated to cost about £4 million, would provide a greater degree of desirable development than could be obtained at any other Firth of Forth port for a similar sum, or, indeed"—
mark the words—
at any other port on the East Coast of Great Britain.
That is what the Committee says. An estimate has been made that if this had been tackled at any other port the cost would have been not less than four times what it will cost at Leith. This is because of the happy position in which we are placed at Leith.
This is the scheme which was suggested to the Secretary of State for Scotland and to the Minister of Transport about three and a half years ago. We asked that we might have some financial assistance in this undertaking, and I am bound to say that the prevarication and delay which we have experienced has filled us with disgust. First, the Minister said,"All right. What about it technically? Can it be operated?" So our own engineers presented a report proving that the scheme is efficient and technically

perfect in every way."Well," said the Minister,"cannot we have an independent report on it?" So the Leith Dock Commissioners came to London and got the finest engineering firm possible to report on it.
It did so, and its report was the same. We presented it to the Government and they agreed."Ah", said the Minister of Transport,"still that is not enough. Cannot we send up our own engineers to have a look at this scheme so that they can report?" The Ministry's own engineers, having thoroughly examined the scheme, presented a similar report, saying that it was a first-class scheme technically and in every way.
After further protracted meetings the Government played another card. They said,"We are about to appoint a committee." It was at this stage that the Rochdale Committee was appointed, and the Government said,"We shall now have to wait until the Rochdale Committee reports". With great reluctance the Leith Dock Commissioners agreed to await the outcome of the Committee's deliberations. Having waited, what do we find that the Rochdale Committee say?
Among other ports we must mention Leith and the Tees. At both of these there are schemes for development which seem to us to merit fairly high priority, since both provide as cheap ways of furnishing further deep water berths on the East coast as can probably be found. At Leith the main aim is to provide better facilities for grain and other bulk cargoes.
In paragraph 623 the Report states:
We do not envisage any over-rigid application of a system of priorities. We do not, for instance, wish to imply that the Leith scheme must necessarily wait on the completion of the Tilbury scheme. We would hope to see both proceeding together.
That is what the Rochdale Committee thought. At the conclusion of paragraph 628 the Report states:
…high priority should be given to the development of Leith…
In view of all these things, we were certainly entitled, after having been asked to wait for three and a half years, to expect that even this Government could have made a decision.
In addition, the Parliamentary Secretary knows, and the Ministers know, that two of the largest grain firms in the country are willing not only to act independently, but to form a consortium to


erect new grain elevators there at a cost of, perhaps, £2 million or £3 million. If further proof is required, I can state that we had an inquiry from an American oil company. At the personal request of the Secretary of State for Scotland. I persuaded an executive of this American company to stay in Edinburgh for a further 48 hours in order to meet the Secretary of State personally and to give him a personal assurance that, if this project was to go on, his company would immediately embark on a scheme involving an initial expenditure of £½ million. One would have thought that all these assurances would have convinced any reasonable person, but I am afraid that the Minister of Transport is not to be included in that category.
The Minister's latest excuse is that we should form an estuarial committee. The Leith Dock Commissioners, at their first meeting with the Ministers three and a half years ago, made that suggestion to the Government. They thought it the sensible thing to do in planning the future development of the area. Why, after three and a half years, the Government have used this as an excuse to delay any action on this scheme is more than we can understand.
The House, I am sure, can well imagine that this paltry excuse has provoked the greatest anger in our area, not just from one section of the community but from every section. The Minister has already had protests from the Edinburgh Corporation, the shipowners, the grain merchants, the Edinburgh Company of Merchants, the trade unions and the co operative movement. They are all, without exception, filled with anger by this latest dodge—because"dodge" is all it can be called.
I have already said that the Dock Commissioners immediately asked for another meeting, but the Minister said,"I cannot find any more time." He has never met them in those three and a half years. We do not complain about the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary, because we realise that he knows much more about shipping than does his right hon. Friend. That is why we are prepared to discuss this scheme with him.
Not only does the Minister refuse to have a meeting, but only last week the

Ministry issued another letter, of which I have a copy, which asks the Commission, if it has any proposals for improvement schemes, to let the Ministry have a copy in triplicate. [Laughter.] Who do they think they are? It may seem funny to hon. Members—I agree that there is some humour in it—but can hon. Members imagine our reaction, after three and a half years of negotiation, to a Ministry letter asking for a copy of any proposals we may have, and asking for copies in triplicate? I suppose it is the usual Government idea. They are always consistent about wanting every thing in triplicate, but it is about their only consistency—

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Vice-Admiral John Hughes Hallett): Perhaps I can reply to that last point now, as it is rather a small one. That was an identical letter sent to all port authorities in connection with the setting up of the Rochdale Council. It is quite true that Leith's plains are known, but I think that Leith would have been rather annoyed had it been omitted from the circulation of that letter.

Mr. Hoy: We have had a lot of rotten excuses, but they have been given by the Minister. I beg the hon. and gallant Gentleman not to put himself into that category. One would have thought that a Ministry that had been corresponding for three and a half years would at least have known enough not to send a letter like that. That is not a good excuse. I can appreciate the Parliamentary Secretary's attempt to defend his Department, but as someone who has been in the Services he knows that sometimes it is better to beat a strategic retreat rather than hold an untenable line. I suggest that just as he found it good in wartime, he might find it equally good in peace time.
We are therefore faced with the fact that after all these years we are very little further forward. The Minister's reputation has never been lower in our eyes—in fact, our view of it is about the same as that of the motorists. We believe that he has ignored us, and that in many ways he has been discourteous. We certainly believe that he has meted out quite uncalled for treatment to a port that has an unsurpassed record in labour relations. I question whether


there is another port where so few days have been lost by industrial disputes since 1945—a mere handful. It is an outstanding record. Leith's turn round of shipping cannot be beaten by any other port, and the National Dock Labour Board has, on occasion, singled it out in paying tribute to the work of the dockers. Leith's plans will not be thwarted by any dictator, whether he be in the Ministry of Transport or anywhere else.
I regret to say that so far in this debate there has not been present a single representative from the Scottish Office. I should have thought this was an important matter for Scotland, and for the Scottish Office—which is always boasting about its new development department—but not a single representative has come, even to listen. I hope that the Secretary of State for Scotland, who is not here, will show a little more"smeddle"—which is a fairly good Scottish word meaning guts or courage—and that he will try to give us an up-to-date port.
I do not want to sound parochial, but this scheme will benefit not only Leith, not only Scotland but, as the Report says, Great Britain as a whole. It is to that end that we want to play our part. We have waited very long—too long—and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to give us better assurances tonight than his Department has so far been able to produce.

7.8 p.m.

Mr. David Webster: I hesitate to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Hoy) into the troubled waters of Leith—because I understand that that is quite a big drop—but I can assure him that his castigation of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport is a little at fault.
The hon. Member cites the Report as stating that there is insufficient capital expenditure on our ports, yet, at the same time, the Dock and Harbour Authorities' Association—of which, presumably, Leith is a member—says:
In chapter 15 the Committee refer to the capital investment by the ports industry in recent years and compare the investment in 1960 with the national total and with the investment in shipping, railways and roads and lighting. The Association do not accept that these are valid comparisons.
Turning to deep-water facilities, the Association also says:

The Committee say, at paragraph 63 of the Report, that British ports are poorly off for deep water dry cargo berths as compared with the major near continental ports and add that they are convinced that the provision of additional deep water berths for dry cargo ships is one of the most pressing problems.
The Association do not accept this view and believe that there has been some misunderstanding as to the difference between dry cargo ships and bulk carriers, including tankers.
I hope to develop this same argument later in my speech.
The context of the debate is that, apart from Teesport, no entry lock over 1,000 ft. has been made in this country since 1914, when the Newport entry lock was built, and that we are reposing on investments made in the heyday of port development during the 50 years prior to the First World War. This argument is made very succinctly in the Report, which compares the situation regarding berths over 35 ft. with that in Europoort at Rotterdam—to which the hon. Gentle man paid a just tribute. I would say to my hon. and gallant Friend and to my right hon. Friend that Europoort is a municipal port as, indeed, is the port of Bristol. This port has 83 berths over 35 ft., Antwerp has 143 berths over that depth, Hamburg 15 and the United Kingdom 53.
Another aspect connected with the fact that no major development except at Teesport has occurred since the beginning of the First World War is the fact—and it is very much borne out in my visits to South Wales and the Bristol Channel ports—that many are predominantly laid out for rail communications. While I do not, of course, object to an adequate rail communication system—and I should like to pay tribute to the improvement which has been made in that respect—it is realistic to say that we are now just as much in the motor age and lorry age, and a great deal needs to be done in that respect.
We are changing from a coal economy and a coal exporting economy, in which we are dependent very much on the coastal trade and the small coastal vessel which is tied up at the coal staithes, filled up and goes round the coast, to the oil tanker situation, and we are coming very much to the day of the bulk carrier, with its great length and deeper draught and the need for a different conception in port


construction. As tonnage increases, the bulk carriers will continue to dominate the affairs of our docks, and we are coming to the day of the port of the future—the push-button port where we shall have the oil and ore carriers coming in with a minimum of labour, but they will very efficiently and adequately deal with the larger units of industry.
I think that this is the context in which we wish to look at this excellent Report, of very wide scope in terms of reference, and the very thorough way in which the Rochdale Committee has investigated this massive problem. It is a massive problem, because 90 per cent. of our imports and 90 per cent. of our exports go through our docks and if our industry, in its manufacturing costs, is to be competitive it needs adequate imports and if, in exporting costs, c.i.f., it is to be competitive, it needs good export facilities. It is vital that this excellent Report should be considered in the House. I was very glad indeed that Lord Rochdale saw fit to go round these three ports in Europe that are developing so rapidly, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg. He says that the comparison is not necessarily a valid one because they have very much larger vessels, have a hinterland dominated by the River Rhine, can get larger vessels in and out, and an immediate discharge to barges going up the Rhine.
I was much impressed by the urgent recommendation of Lord Rochdale that there should be a tremendous amount of new information collated for the use of the National Ports Council. This is essential, and I hope that now the further names of the members of the Council have been declared, this information will be very rapidly available and that investment decisions will not be held up as a result of lack of information. The Rochdale Report at one time says that this is urgent and yet the next time, it seems from my hon. Friends who have spoken and hon. Members opposite, the main complaint is that investment decisions have been held up.
Again, I must refer to the Report, which I have already mentioned, of the Dock and Harbour Authorities' Associations, where it talked about the Ports Council and hoped very much that this would not be a backdoor to nationalize-

ton, I say this advisedly, because we have heard frequently, in transport debates in the House, that it is a great shame and a great danger to the industry concerned that politics have been brought into it. If this is a method of nationalization, and is used for that in the future, then politics will have been brought in and will bedevil the industry.
There is another reservation—that the Ports Council has the right of veto or investment by the port authority concerned and yet is not financially responsible. That is a little like being a mother-in-law who has the right of veto in certain cases without the responsibility. This is a matter which, I know, worries very much the dock authorities. I would prefer to see the Council drawn more into some advisory capacity, but I await with great interest to see the terms in which the Bill is drawn.
I would refer to the road-rail situation at Bristol and again pay tribute to the tremendous work done in building up the express rail export service and the import services as well from the Port of London. The recommendation to do this was made in 1956, and by 1961 62,000 wagons were being used on the export express service. This is an excellent thing, like the use of the night importer express. I hope that this will be linked with the speeding up of the railway system as brought out in the Beeching Report.
It is true that there is a swing to road haulage, and it is pertinent to say that it is important to replant many of our major docks so that there is greater access for the road hauler to get in, and, at the same time, to hope that the method of loading and methods employed by the road hauler can also be modernised. It is well known that when a number of days are allocated for loading a vessel very little is done in the first few days, but in the last few days of loading—and surveys have proved it—there is, as we say in Ireland, a rush of food to the face.
A survey showed that in one case 70 lorries came after the day when the loading was supposed to have finished. I suggest that a bonus should be given to a road hauler who is able to put his cargo on board the vessel during the early days of loading. I think that that would make it considerably more efficient. A good deal of publicity should also be


given to the fact that the load that is last in should not necessarily be the first out. I believe that many road haulers deliberately delay arrival at the dock in order that the cargo should be first off at the other end. These are points possibly of detail which could be looked at. It would streamline the arrangements if that could be done.
As for Bristol and not only the city docks, but the port of Avonmouth, I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. McLaren) would be anxious to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, were it not the fact that he is a Government Whip. For that reason it is possibly more politic that he should not make public speeches on the subject.
I was interested that Lord Rochdale singled out the three ports of Europoort Antwerp and Hamburg and says that their excellence is very largely due to their close municipal connection, but, on the other hand, suggests that the port of Bristol, which since 1848 has been a municipal undertaking, and the port of Avonmouth which was started under the Avonmouth Board Harbour Act in 1862 and the Avonmouth Dock Act in 1864, should be taken away and given to an Upper Severn Authority. I do not represent Bristol itself, but I think that from a knowledge of the people I can say that the men of Bristol will be much up in arms if anything is done to take their ports away from them. I would have thought that the close connection with Newport would be a much better association.
As far as I can understand from the authorities concerned, that seems to be a more popular and workable arrangement. I gather that the Bristol Corporation has changed the political colour of the governing body since the Rochdale Report was published, but I know that there is absolute unanimity on the corporation on this matter and that it would be better for us not to create an Upper Severn Authority, but to merge the two ports under the corporation.
I would ask my hon. and gallant Friend on what basis it is proposed to have valuations on the take-over of any port by another. I am well aware that many of the properties of the British Transport Commission, as it used to be, and the Docks Board as it now is, have not been

valued since the great railway construction by Hudson, the railway king, in 1848. I should hope to see a very thorough valuation of the assets if they are to be taken over from the Docks Board. Only on that accurate basis will an equitable system agreeable to both sides be established.
To return to the Rochdale Report, there is the recommendation, on the one hand, that we should have more deep-water berths, and, on the other, the recommendation that the building of Portbury, the new project, should be deferred. I respect a great deal in the Report, but this strikes me as illogical. I cannot see how the Portbury concept affects capacity in Newport. The two are not comparable.
Portbury is the next stage of development. It is to be compared with Europoort. This is the more advanced stage where it is hoped that vessels will come into the new complex and tie alongside a pocket oil refinery. This is a new conception of the oil industry serving the immediate locality and cutting down the pipeline and other transport expenses. I should have thought that it was an imaginative project to launch this sort of thing in the Portbury area.
There are many other concerns, including perhaps Imperial Smelters, and also to build up a petro-chemical industry in the area. I should have thought that this imaginative concept was one which Lord Rochdale, in his wisdom, would have said should be accelerated rather than deferred. I am sure that Lord Rochdale differentiates between bulk cargo and the cargo vessel which would use the Newport area and that if the new concept came about we could take tankers out of the Royal Edward Dock. It is unusual to see tankers in a dock project.
It is also said that the new concept should be deferred until the two-shift system of working is brought about. When I spoke to authorities on this matter they said that they entirely agreed that two-shift working should be brought in as quickly as possible, but they added that before that could be done the customer would also have to be persuaded to work the two-shift system, otherwise there would be a tremendous building up of stores which could not be dealt


with adequately and justice would not be done to the ports. It is true to say that Bristol is surging ahead and that it would be a tragedy to the West Country, where we have a good deal of development difficulty and local unemployment, if this imaginative project was not brought about.
I was greatly impressed by the overall look taken at this problem by the Rochdale Committee. It speaks of four major estuaries, the Bristol Channel, the Humber, the Mersey and the Thames, and the St. Andrew's Cross which they make between them, the centre of which is in Birmingham and the industrial Midlands. It is encouraging to know that Lord Rochdale, my right hon. Friend, and his predecessor came to the conclusion that the main artery should be in the form of that cross and that our excellent motorways are built on this basis. It shows that there is a comprehensive dovetailing of the various transport requirements.
I have reminded the House that 90 per cent, of exports and 90 per cent, of imports go through the docks. If, with many of the things recommended in the Report and with decasualisation, we can make the ports highly efficient we shall have done a great deal to make the nation efficient and competitive in the years ahead.

7.25 p.m.

Dr. Horace King: I am glad that after weeks and months of goading from both sides of the House the Government at last have been persuaded to tell us that they like the Rochdale Report. It is almost true to say that the Government have taken as long to make up their mind whether they supported the Report as it took those who made the Report to prepare it. I am one of those who likes to see the Government slowly fumbling their way towards Socialism by necessity. It reminds me of the rhyme:
The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be.
The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Webster) does not seem to mind in the least Socialist planning as long as it does not lead towards nationalization, and he even pleaded for municipal Socialism where Bristol is concerned.

Vice-Admiral Hughes-Hallett: I am sure that the hon. Member would not wish to be unfair. I would remind him that the Government's decision on the Rochdale Report was announced at the beginning of March. The Report was received towards the end of September. The intervening period was taken up awaiting the views of various authorities whom we had to consult. As I think the House was told at the tune, and I do not make any point of this, the particular authority for whom we had to wait a long time was the T.U.C.

Dr. King: What the hon. and gallant Gentleman says does not invalidate what I said. The Government took six months to make up their mind and the Committee took just over a year to make its Report. We have been asking every Thursday from both sides of the House for over six months that the Leader of the House should give us the debate which we are having today.
May I add another controversial note? To me the only regrettable feature of the Minister's speech, and one which he repeated twice, was that he spoke about the next Session of this Parliament. That struck me as quite ominous. We had hoped that this Session would be the last of this Parliament and that in October we should have persuaded the Government to go to the country and should have had returned a Government enjoying the support of the electorate. If what the right hon. Gentleman said has any validity I am distressed to think that we are to have a further Session of this Parliament.
The Rochdale Report is a great forward-looking document. Britain ought to be grateful to Lord Rochdale and the other members of the Committee. It would, however, be idle if we were merely to express gratitude and do very little about the Report. In or out of the Common Market we are fighting for our very existence in shipping, shipbuilding, ship repairing and trade in ships. They are are part of the life-blood of our existence.
The Report tells us that rapid, revolutionary and planned development is essential in our ports. I want to set the document against a letter which I received from a distinguished Hampshire citizen, the Clerk to Hampshire County Council, who has just visited Rotterdam which deals with 50 million tons of dry cargo


compared with Southampton's 1½ million tons. He speaks first about coal berths and says:
I was told that when a few years ago we in England had to import coal from the United States, the coal was, in fact, shipped to Rotterdam, where it was unloaded and decanted into smaller ships in which it was ultimately brought to this country. When I asked why this should be so I was told that this particular dock in Rotterdam was equipped with cranes capable of discharging 800 tons an hour, and that with four such cranes it did not take long to discharge a cargo, and that nowhere in this country had we docks so well equipped.
Then, writing of Europoort, which features in the Rochdale Report, he said:
This is an entirely new dock system which has been constructed near the entrance to the New Maas opposite the Hook of Holland. It will provide the most up-to-date docks with a minimum depth of 50 ft. It extends over an area of 10,000 acres, and was formerly polder land, the level of which is being raised by about 17 ft. The layout of the harbour basin and the site is estimated to cost £70 million. The enterprise has already attracted four major oil companies and they are being followed by a variety of chemical, metal and other industries.
All this, incidentally, is the product of Dutch municipal socialism, because Rotterdam Town Council owns the whole project.
It is against this kind of background, with every competing country doing things like Rotterdam, that Britain has to face the bold long-term goals laid down in the Rochdale Report. We die or live by the amount of exporting and importing we do. Rochdale says that we should aim at doubling our dry cargo imports by 1975—perhaps more than doubling—and even more than doubling our dry cargo exports by 1980.
Rochdale says that this cannot be done without a plan, without concentrating on those docks which are ripe for expansion, most favourably situated in the country and best endowed naturally, without catering for larger cargo ships, without modernising equipment, without modernising methods of working and without establishing much better labour relations than exist at the moment. In addition to all this, and most important, we shall not succeed unless we have adequate communications between the ports and the hinterland.
All this is magnificent. What is now wanted is the will and the drive to accomplish it. Here, as in so many fields, Britain needs to be called to a sense

of urgency and purpose. If I speak of my own town of Southampton it is because I know it best. What I have to say about Southampton contains certain principles which apply to the whole question. Southampton, which is one of the selected ports in the grand design, is one of the world's great natural ports. It is already Britain's premier passenger port, although it must not be thought of merely as a passenger port. Rochdale calls for a dramatic expansion of its dry cargo handling facilities. The Report selects it as one of the major ports. But whether it is finally so selected or whether it is not—although I think it will be—the issues that I raise are common to the whole problem of our ports and the part they have to play in the economic struggle.
This port has a proud record. The old Southern Railway owned by private enterprise—I am always fair—carried out before the war a magnificent reclamation scheme which only the older Members in the House who remember the former mudlands will appreciate. Incidentally, I believe that some day Britain has got to get the imagination and initiative to tackle again jobs of that calibre which transformed mudland into the extension of the docks at Southampton and a new industrial site as they exist today. We have got to imitate what the Dutch are doing so magnificently at tremendous capital cost—the much more difficult project of winning land from the sea. We have mudland near Portsmouth and bad land all round the coast, which we are wasting and which could be saved if we put the capital and work into it. Britain is desperately short of land.
Since the war British Transport, in control of the docks, has shown great drive and initiative in its own docks extensions, in its fine terminal which we have been able to boast about to the Americans as one of the few things in this country which are bigger and better than the Americans have. Also we have the Union Castle terminal. The Southampton Harbour Board has been served with skill and devotion by generations of Southamptonians.
This has been the basis of organisation—first the railways becoming the transport authority, and now becoming the Southampton Dock Authority, and side by side the Harbour Board. The


dock authority is already planning extensions almost as if it anticipated the Rochdale Report. Indeed, much of what Rochdale asks for, so far as Southampton is concerned, exists in embryo in the plans which the dock authority has under way. Rochdale, however, foresees developments at a scale and speed which cannot be tackled inside a port area by separate authorities. They must be tackled by a single authority. Developments like the new deep dry dock, and adequate facilities for handling much more cargo, demand a uni-purpose authority. Certainly the Southampton Harbour Board and the Southampton Corporation—I cannot speak for the whole dock authority or for British Railways—welcome the conception of a single authority and would place no obstacle in the way of one.
In the case of Southampton much of the cargo which is handled and will be handled in the great design will come from the Midlands. Therefore, it is vital that communications from Southampton to the Midlands should be modern and efficient. Here, so far, the Government have failed. In the town of Southampton itself they have failed to build the important Itchen Bridge which was promised by the Tory Party to Southampton in the year when I went to Southampton as a young schoolmaster 40 years ago. Indeed, the present position is that Southampton Council has all the plans ready for the bridge and waits for the word"go" from the Minister. The bridge is well down the list. It is a major communication project and we are not even allowed to make the first preparations in the area of the promised bridge, as the Minister knows.
Traffic movement through Southampton, especially at peak hours, is a nightmare. It is true that the present work on roundabouts will be an improvement. There is a fair amount of road work already planned and a fair amount achieved. Again, some of it is only waiting for permission to start. Looking to the north from Southampton, Winchester is a bottleneck. There are major plans in the Minister's mind for great arterial roads. Our major ports must be served by major communications. As the Minister will probably know, all the Hampshire Members have been pleading

with him and his predecessor for the last eight years for a better road programme. As the Clerk to the Hampshire County Council wrote, the road system from the South to the Midlands is
utterly inadequate and completely obsolete.
The railway service to this port is geared to passenger transport. It is a fine service for the purpose which it has to achieve, but Beeching seems to have ignored Rochdale in all that he has been doing. His only contribution to this problem of communications from South-hampton to the Midlands is a proposal to cut die goods traffic line from Southampton, Newport, Oxford to the Midlands. Rochdale and Beechingspeak with two voices. One is forward-looking and optimistic. The other is the voice of despair.

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: No.

Dr. King: If the hon. Gentleman wants to say anything but"No" he can stand up and intervene in the recognised Parliamentary manner. Mare negatives do not do him any good or me any harm. I suggest that Rochdale and Beeching ought to be brought together. The railway problem, the question of how far we cut the railways, must be linked with the economic value of the railways as a means of goods transport.

Mr. Marples: They have already met. I said so in my opening speech, and I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has not referred to that. Initially, they met at my Ministry, and they have already discussed details since. It is no good saying that they ought to be brought together when they have, in fact, met.

Dr. King: Then I can only hope that their meetings will produce more fruit than so far the Beeching Report has produced for our railways.
All that I have said about South-hampton has to be seen against the background of an expanding Hampshire. It is a county in which there is one of the largest implosions of population in the country, with a prospect of industrial expansion following the expansion of a major port and with the prospect of bringing out of London—to almost the only place where they can go in the South—some of the surplus, the 2 million or 2½ million people, which, according to the Minister of Housing


and Local Government, will have to be decanted somewhere.
The tasks are so vast that not only do we need the single authority which Rochdale rightly says must exist for each of the major ports but we need, side by side with it, in the view of Southampton's citizens, something like the equivalent of a consumer council, a properly constituted body which can make representations to the new port authority on matters affecting the whole well being of the port and the rest.
The impact of these port expansions on the hinterland and the impact of the development of Southampton port, Southampton town and Southern Hampshire raise problems of planning in providing services of a scale, I believe, beyond the capacity of the local authorities separately. Just as we need a single port authority, we need a joint body in this wider context. I suggest that the Minister should bring together, at a very early stage, representatives of the major local authorities involved to set up some sort of joint body to tackle these problems and administer the broader plans which are beyond the capacity of each of them individually.
Now, just one detailed point before I pass to the most important thing I have to say. There need be no fear in the minds of British citizens today about the interference of a development like this with natural amenities. Everybody loves Southampton Water, There are people who would like it to remain in the beautiful state in which it was at the time of the Ancient Britons or William the Conqueror. It is possible, by proper planning, to reconcile the claims of modern industry with the claims of those who want to preserve amenity. We have long passed the day when men made their wealth in the industrial North by making it ugly and then came to enjoy it in the beautiful South which they kept beautiful. In any industrial development around a great port we must preserve the amenities. I say this with particular reference to the Solent and Southampton Water, which mean a great deal to Southampton and to the Hampshire County Council.
In my view, just about the most important feature of the Report is that dealing with proposals to abolish casual

labour. I speak as one who, over about 30 years, has spoken outside the dock gates to the workers in the docks. I like to think that, before I die, we shall reach a state of society when I can make a political speech to workmen during their lunch hour within the dock gates, not without. But Labour Members of Parliament still make their open air speeches outside the factory gates, as they did when the movement began.
I often go down, as does the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) in his Liverpool constituency, to see the men waiting to sign on in the early morning. They stand on the street corner, near the employment exchange, in all weathers. In slack periods, one or two out of 200 or 300 will be taken on. Often, the men who go there day by day waiting to be taken on, but not being taken on or being taken on last, are the older ones, men who have been my friends for 40 years, men who sent me to Parliament.
I hope that we shall one day end this system of the casual hiring and firing of men at the dock gates. It will not be easy. Ernest Bevin achieved a great deal during the war by his first stage of decasualisation. The National Dock Labour Scheme of 1947 put a sort of peace-time seal to this and established it permanently. But, as the Rochdale Report points out, although we have registered dock labour now, we have not abolished casual labour even inside the registered dock limits.
Of 70,000 registered dock workers only 16,500 were regular weekly workers in 1961. I read in the Report that in Southampton only 10 per cent. of the registered dock workers in Southampton Docks worked regular weeks right through the year 1961. The rest of them had to assemble twice a day to find out whether they would be taken on for a job. I echo what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Hoy). The men do not like it. They are not used to it. They resent it. And I feel humiliated when I stand by talking to them, especially on mornings when they are not even taken on.
It is true that some unions provide decent places for the men to hang about, so to speak, waiting to assemble. The smaller unions cannot do this, and in


some parts of the country it may be literally impossible, with the docks spread out a long way, to make suitable accommodation available unless a fair amount of money is spent. I have raised this matter often. I understand that steps are being taken to improve the conditions in which men have to wait.

Mr. Mellish: This is not a trade union responsibility, nor, as I understand it, would the unions be allowed to provide such accommodation. This is the responsibility of the National Dock Labour Board, whose record on it, as I think my hon. Friend will agree, is really quite remarkable, although, admittedly, not adequate enough.

Dr. King: I am only speaking of what I know happens outside the dock. What the National Dock Labour Board does inside the dock may be another matter. I am coming to the point, if my hon. Friend will allow me.
I hope that the port authorities and the National Dock Labour Board will take it upon themselves to improve the conditions in which men have to wait to be signed on.
At first sight, the two objects of the Dock Labour Scheme seem to be irreconcilable. The first is
to ensure greater regularity of employment for dock workers
and the other, on the employers' side, is to secure that there are always enough men available for dock work. Demands in the docks change from week to week, from day to day, from hour to hour, and even from minute to minute. In good times, the men can make a lot by overtime. In bad times, many of them are unemployed and receive only the minimum weekly rate which they get as registered dock workers.
So far, both sides have failed to solve the problem. It is a great problem. In paragraph 366, Rochdale says:
The status of casual worker and the precarious living that almost inevitably goes with it are destructive of morale and offensive to modern political and social ideas.
Again, in the same paragraph:
Where there are no permanent employer/employee relationships there is little scope for mutual trust, loyalty and understanding to develop between the two sides.
Southampton Dock, like Leith, has a fine record of labour relations. I pay

special tribute to my friends the leaders of the various trade unions in the docks. There is good will between management and men almost invariably in Southampton Dock. But the real basis for the kind of understanding which one wants to see inside any industry, the sound economic basis for good human relationships, cannot exist so long as we have this casual hiring and firing.
The Report suggests a possible answer. It lies partly in the concentration of business in a number of ports and partly in the proposed concentration of the groups of employers inside ports on the theory that the bigger the group the more chance there is to stagger the work and to put men on other kinds of work outside the peak periods of loading and unloading. Inside the bigger unit one ought to be able to cope a little better with the problem of moving towards the goal that we want to achieve, with every dock worker, like any other citizen, having a regular job and security and knowing exactly where he is. He will never be entirely in that position. He must be prepared to be called upon for emergency service, but with good will on both sides and some kind of concentration of the groups into large units we should be able to get much nearer regular conditions of dock work than we are.
My own experience is that dockers are about the finest bunch of men that I know. They are certainly more loyal to each other than almost any other group in the community. They played a heroic part when the docks in my town were a number one target for Hitler, as heroic as that of any soldier at Dunkirk. They are stubborn. They can be led, but they will not be driven. I hope that with this goal and prospect before them, both master and man, we can use it as an instrument towards getting rid of some of the scourge of decasualisation.
I end as I began. The demands of the Report are for a plan, for expansion, for efficiency, and for good labour relations. I believe that it is for the ports of Britain what the Crowther Report is for education—a beacon light and a goal For this, as for Crowther, I believe that Britain has the material resources, the ability and the will if it is only given the lead. I hope that the Government will give that lead.

7.52 p.m.

Mr. Denys Bullard: I think that all hon. Members agree with what the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) has said about the importance of decasualisation of labour in the docks. I also agree with him that at some time in the future it may again be necessary to capture the imagination of the British people by going in for big schemes involving land reclamation, industrial development, the provision of holiday opportunities and so on, by really big schemes. I always thought that in the Wash, which is in my area, there was abundant opportunity for a good deal of work to be done on those lines.
I want to be brief, but I wish to mention the position of the smaller ports under the Rochdale Committee's recommendation. I think that anyone who has studied the facilities which are available in ports abroad—and those at Hamburg and Rotterdam have been mentioned particularly—would agree that we have a special job to do in this country. It may be necessary to go in for large-scale planning and, perhaps, to close or amalgamate small ports in order to achieve the big schemes which are necessary to compete with what is done in ports abroad.
It would, however, easily be possible to carry this too far and to overlook altogether the significance of the small ports. I think that it was a pity that the Rochdale Committee saw fit to go outside its terms of reference, which were to deal with the major ports, and to make its recommendations applicable to the small ports without consulting those small ports or taking special note of the industrial interests concerned with them.
I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend the Minister say that the new Council which is being set up will not have dictatorial powers over the local bodies responsible for the ports. This would be specially oppressive in the case of the small ports. The port of King's Lynn, with which I am specially concerned, a very ancient port, may at one time, relative to the other ports of the country, have been very much more significant in size than it is today, but, nevertheless, I feel that it and others like it fulfil an enormously important rôle in the industrial system.
I would instance only the case of the handling of timber coming into this country. This is a matter in which there must be a very close relationship between the workers and the importers and there needs to be a very close tie-up with the ports from which the ships come. It is significant that the ships which bring timber to the port of King's Lynn and to other ports like it on the East Coast often come from very small ports on the Continent. We have heard a great deal about the significance of Rotterdam and Hamburg. Much of this trade comes from very small ports in Finland, Scandinavia generally, Russia and elsewhere. If we were to neglect our side of the job concerning the small ports we should be doing a very great disservice.
Labour relations in the small ports are often very good. Everybody knows everybody else, and certainly in King's Lynn there are very good committees made up of the dockers and port users working to achieve good industrial relationships. I think that one could get undue centralisation, especially affecting the importation of timber.
A great deal of modernisation has already been carried out in King's Lynn. There is a new transit shed which affords very good facilities indeed. We are in the process, under my right hon. Friend's authority, of having a new trunk road constructed to the dock. There has been very notable modernisation of machinery and handling equipment. I fear that, in view of the Rochdale recommendations, there might be a tendency for this kind of work to slow up. It would be a very great pity if it were to do so.
We find ourselves in a rather difficult position. There has been, during the winter months, considerable unemployment in the town of King's Lynn. I am glad to say it is much better now. We do not qualify for any facilities under development schemes. We do not have any free depreciation. We do not get any special grants. It would be rather a pity if the Rochdale recommendations were taken to assume that development of the small ports ought to be rather discouraged. I certainly hope that that is not my right hon. Friend's view.
I hope that I have spoken not only on behalf of my home port, but on behalf of small ports generally. I hope that


when my right hon. Friend replies he will indicate that he has this particular side of the matter very much in mind.

8.0 p.m.

Commander Harry Pursey: The Rochdale Report deals with the 15 major ports. The main theme is that the general trend towards bigger ships has created a demand for berths with a greater length of quay and depth of water, that our ports are inadequate even for present, and much more so for future, requirements and that what is needed is not more ports but better ports.
My task as the Member of Parliament for East Hull, which includes the main docks, is to deal with one port—Hull—to support the general recommendations of the Rochdale Report, to press the case for the local suggestions and to advocate even further developments. I will not spend time on foreign ports. One of the factors which has been omitted concerning the larger and better foreign ports is that they were all razed to the ground during the war and had to be rebuilt and, naturally, were rebuilt on better lines than formerly.
Hull is one of Britain's nationalised ports, with a fine post-war record of achievement and development in the interests of both shipowners and traders. The docks are one of the few major flourishing industries in the city, a city which is deserving of far more interest and support from the present Tory Government. Hull is the forgotten port and city. No Tory Cabinet Minister is really interested in either or has visited the port.
Has the Minister of Transport ever been there—the answer is, apparently,"No"—to consider the road problems in and out of the docks and to and from the Midlands? The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has visited the fish docks, because it is possible to get a good fish breakfast at the trawler owners' club and his son wished to try getting seasick in a bucking-bronco trawler off Iceland.
Hull is the eighth city and the third port in the country. The Rochdale Report stated:
Hull is a special case because it is both a major fishing port and a major trading harbour.

It is one of the few ports, if not the only one, to deal with 3 million tons of oil, 2 million tons inwards and 1 million tons outwards, to import 1 million tons of grain and export 1 million tons of coal per annum, and after London it is the largest British timber port. The largest port on the East Coast, with seven miles of docks covering 200 acres, Hull is the ideal port for exports to the Continent and the world at large and imports from the Continent and elsewhere to the Midlands and further a field.
Last year, general cargo imports through Hull totalled 4 million tons and exports 1 million tons, giving an aggregate of 5 million tons. With oil traffic at 3 million tons, the total traffic outwards and inwards was 8½ million tons, of a value of £450 million. While many other ports experienced a fall in tonnage during 1962, Hull enjoyed an overall increase of nearly 8 per cent.
The number of ships entering the River Humber is about 12,000 a year and sometimes 40 a day are efficiently handled by the capable Humber pilots, usually without incident. The Conservancy Board charge for all its services is less than 2d. on each ton of cargo. Last winter, however, the pilot cutter"J. H. Fisher" was sunk off the mouth of the Humber and the pilots on their sea service suffered an involuntary cold bath and swim.
Hull was the worst bombed city and port other than London. The first task was to make good the vast amount of war damage and the second was to engage in major developments, some of which should have been carried out by private enterprise before the war. Since nationalization, over £16 million has been spent on developments alone and the expenditure of a further £5 million has recently been approved. This total expenditure of over £20 million compares favourably with that of any other similar docks authority. In fact, the Rochdale Report commented favourably on the extensive improvements since the war and that further schemes for improvements have been prepared.
The Rochdale Committee stated that further developments of port facilities on the Humber will, in due course, almost certainly be necessary and made these suggestions. First, that consideration


should be given to the timing and advantages of an entirely new large deep-water dock below Salt End, which has already received preliminary consideration by the Docks Board. This development proposal for another large deep-water dock should be supported. The second suggestion was for an improved east-west road from the port to the Midlands and the third was for a road crossing of the River Humber.
In my opinion, the large new dock should have priority over the Humber Bridge, which has never been on the list of the Minister of Transport because of the dock's far greater importance to the port and city. This dock will require an appreciable Government grant and adequate financial aid should be provided. Financial aid has been discussed already in the debate and so I will not argue the pros and cons of it. The £20 million of the national economy which would be required for a bridge would be far better spent on the new deep-water dock and improved roads.
An indication of the necessity of the new deep-water dock is seen in the expensive impounding station now being built at King George Dock with three pumps of 67,000 gallons per minute capacity and associated culverts. The object is to raise the water level in the dock by4 ft. to enable vessels of up to 25,000 deadweight tons to be accepted. This is all to the good, but it indicates what is required in the way of new development on the Humber, because even with the impounding scheme, which gives another 4 ft. of depth, it is possible to dock ships of only up to 25,000 tons. I assume, rightly or wrongly, that if a deeper dock were available these vessels would dock there and this large expense would not be carried out at King George Dock, which at present is the largest and deepest.
As regards estuarial amalgamation of the Humber ports, the Rochdale Committee stated in paragraph 598:
Port and navigational facilities on the Humber are already unified to some degree. For example, all four principle Humber ports are owned and operated by the British Transport Commission.
That is now the British Transport Docks Board.
Two of them, Grimsby and Immingham, are administered as a unit, Hull, Grimsby and Immingham share a common dredging fleet,

while Hull's Docks Accountant and Estate Surveyor act also for the Commission's other Humber ports. There are close operational links between Hull and Goole because of the Large volume of waterborne traffic which passes between them, and Grimsby and Hull have affinities in that both are important fish and timber ports.
Paragraph 599 states:
For these reasons we believe that there is an obvious case for the complete amalgamation of port facilities on the Humber.
Here is a case where, except for the ancillary services such as the Humber Conservancy Board, there is a case for amalgamation, but a case for amalgamation to remain as it is under the British Transport Docks Board. Why should there be any question of a flash take-over where there is a perfectly efficient organisation already inexistence running the ports of this estuary practically as one organisation?
The major traffic in Hull docks last year was the import of grain which accounted for one-quarter of the total imports. In November, for the first time, the 1 million ton mark was passed, and by the end of the year the figure was the highest ever recorded for grain. In earlier years the major traffic was the export of coal. Nine years ago, in 1954, the figure was 3 million tons, and as recently as 1957, or only six years ago, it was over 2 million tons. Last year, however, the coal figure was only 350,000 tons, but even so this was half the total cargo exports and the largest outward traffic.
The one prediction made by the Rochdale Committee which events have proved wrong is:
The tonnage of coal exported seems unlikely to increase very substantially in the foreseeable future.
In fact, this year, there has been a real upsurge, and whereas other Members have been talking about declining coal exports, coal exports there are increasing; and the Chairman of the National Coal Board, Lord Robens, has said that he hopes to double his 5 million tons for export to 10 million; and all along, it is one of our major exports.
The Docks Board, however, fortified by the Rochdale Report, published in September, 1962, and last year's low local coal figures, considered a proposal to reduce the number of coal hoists in Hull from four to two only. Such limited


facilities would have been less than those at the small port of Boston. With breakdowns and repairs, Britain's third port, incredible though it will sound, could not have guaranteed a continuous shipment of coal, even with a demand of 350,000 tons per annum. It would appear that in some quarters of the British Transport Docks Board organisation there is an antipathy to the nationalised coal industry and the National Coal Board, and instead of giving it facilities they try to put every difficulty in the way. Whether two hoists would have been sufficient for last year's shipments is now immaterial because the figures have rocketed.
I must mention, however, that on 24th June I wrote to the Minister of Transport stating that the removal proposal was an incredible one and asking the Minister for the indefinite retention of all four coal hoists. It is only today, 16 days later, that on entering the Chamber I received a reply from the Parliamentary Secretary. I assume that it is not a private letter and that I am free to mention certain short extracts from it. Am I correct? It is not a private letter?

Mr. Marples: Whether it is a private letter or not, I do not know. The Parliamentary Secretary sent the letter.

Commander Pursey: I think there is no question that it is a public letter.

Mr. William Ross: It did not mention that it was private, did it?

Commander Pursey: This letter is of interest particularly to my hon. and right hon. Friends on our Front Bench from the point of view of the capital position because it says:
Our responsibility is, of course, to approve proposals involving substantial capital outlay, under Section 27 of the Transport Act, 1962.
There has been a lot of argument about this question of control of capital expenditure, but that position already exists so far as the nationalised docks are concerned. The letter also says:
We examined the Board's proposals for Alexandra Dock very carefully, but saw no reason to dissent from them.
Taking extracts only, the letter says:
Hull needs more general cargo berth ages, but it is far from clear that the remaining four appliances will not be adequate for the regular coal trade.

I suggest to the Minister that that extract can be read both ways, positive and negative. To take another extract, the letter goes on:
We must not risk a possible 'flash in the pan' in coal shipping obstructing the proper development of Hull".
The final extract I would read is:
I agree wish you this may well involve new appliances.
That was about coal shipping arrangements.
What I would ask the Minister to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to do is to make a definite statement that the four coal hoists in Hull will be retained in commission till such time as alternative arrangements are made, and that there will be no question of cutting those four down by two and leaving us with two only. One of those is an inadequate berth and could not provide for continuous shipment of coal from the port. In other words, we could have a large ship at one berth loading with coal, the appliance breaks down, she could not go to the other berth and fill, and would have to sail with only part cargo.
So far this year Hull's coal exports have been three times those of 1962. The ½ million mark was passed in June, and the figure is likely to exceed 1 million before the end of the year. If so, coal will probably be the largest traffic outward and inward for the year. In fact, the figure is likely to exceed Immingham's figure for 1962, with all its modern appliances. The Docks Board has spent large sums of money, and rightly so, on greatly improved facilities for both the import and the storage of 1 million tons of grain. Grain is an irregular traffic. Why is not similar consideration given in respect of the export of 1 million tons of coal, for coal is a more regular traffic than grain and more easily dealt with?
The first requisite is to retain and keep in use the four existing coal hoists. But further consideration is also required for this most important traffic and perhaps the largest in the future. Admittedly, what is required is that the Chairman of the National Coal Board, Lord Robens, should provide an estimate of the coal expected to be exported from Hull in future years as a basis on which to consider the appliances required.
Also, why not provide the latest and most modern appliances for coal as for


grain at a deep-water berth in the large King George Dock instead of the old appliances in the smaller Alexandra Dock? What is required is a return to the halcyon days for all concerned of the earlier policy of"grain in, coal out" in the same dock, but today in larger ships. Both the Chief Docks Manager, Hull, Mr. S, Johnson, and the Chairman of the British Transport Docks Board, London, Sir Arthur Kirby, should have a motto beside the clocks in their offices, and, when this motto becomes absorbed in the floral background, a cuckoo clock to chirp the motto every hour"Grain in, coal out".
As the Member of Parliament responsible for the Hull main docks area, I have a duty to advocate that the present plans for which expenditure has already been approved should be proceeded with without delay—in other words, we do not want any stoppages from the Minister in respect of the plans which have already been approved and for which expenditure has been arranged—that future development should be favourably considered, in particular the new deep-water dock and especially the road schemes, and that a reappraisal should be made of the Alexandra Dock proposals with the object of similar consideration being given to coal as to grain. And why not?

8.22 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: I shall not follow the hon. and gallant Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Commander Pursey) in his dissertation on the economics of Hull docks, but I would remark that the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) and the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Hoy) followed the example of the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) in chiding those on the Government side of the House for having repealed Section 3 of the Transport Act, 1947, which, among other things—and among a good number of other things—gave the British Transport Commission power to improve port facilities, and now coming forward with a proposal that a National Ports Council should have the primary function of formulating a national plan and supervising its execution.
There is nothing illogical about that What the hon. Members to whom I have referred have not appreciated is the real difference on the question of planning

between the two sides of the House. The difference is an attitude of mind. I would define Conservatism as a balanced attitude of mind which seeks to apply the lessons of past experience to the problems of the present. We are quite prepared to do anything which, from our experience, we think would be good, but we are not prepared to put forward a proposal simply because it fits in with Socialism, or nationalization, or any other theory.
Section 3 of the Transport Act, 1947, was just a theory. It was an attempt to produce an integrated system of transport and hand it over to a Commission which had not the powers to operate it, and obviously it could not work. So we repealed it. But when we have a Report which indicates that an improvement in docks is necessary, we are quite prepared to consider a central plan for that purpose. I have said this quickly because it is late, but if hon. Members opposite read in the Official Report tomorrow what I have said they will find that it is quite logical.

Mr. Cyril Bence: Is the hon. Member suggesting that he would support any great idea even if it conflicted with fundamental Conservative principles?

Mr. Wilson: I would say,"Yes, certainly". But when the hon. Gentleman talks about fundamental Conservative philosophy it is a mistake to suppose that there is any such thing. The definition I have given is that we are prepared to do anything which, in our experience, is shown to be suitable for the particular occasion which has arisen. However, we must not get diverted into the philosophies of political parties.
I hope that this debate will have convinced the House and the public that the fears that hon. Members opposite have so often expressed—that the Government are dealing with transport problems in isolation—can now be ended, because it is clear from what my right hon. Friend said today that that is not so. My right hon. Friend referred to a large number of reports which have been coming out in recent months and, in particular, to the four major ones.
These are the Rochdale Report itself, the Report by Sir Robert Hall on the Transport Needs of Great Britain in


the next Twenty Years—too little attention has been paid to that important Report—the Beeching Report, which has been completely misunderstood by hon. Members opposite and which deals with the pattern of a modernised railway system consistent with modern requirements and has to be read in conjunction with the other Reports before it makes any sense at all, and the coming Report by Mr. Colin Buchanan on roads, which, I understand, will be the most comprehensive and revolutionary of the lot. These four Reports will have to be considered together in order to produce a co-ordinated transport policy, to which we have no objection at all.

Mr. Stan Awbery: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there should be a co-ordinated transport system?

Mr. Wilson: I do, but I say that it should not be integrated.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Robert Grimston): Order. We cannot have two hon. Gentlemen on their feet at the same time.

Mr. Awbery: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The hon. Gentleman did give way. I asked him if he believed in a planned, co-ordinated transport system. If he does, then he must include road, rail and air transport in order to bring it about.

Mr. Wilson: Of course we believe in a co-ordinated system. I refer the hon. Gentleman to what my right hon. Friend said on 27th March. I had asked him what was being done to co-ordinate the Beeching Report with the other Reports and his reply was:
The question of co-ordinating various forms of transport with a newly reshaped railway system will be brought before the Transport Advisory Council."—[Official Report, 27th March, 1963; Vol. 674, c. 1324.]
There is nothing new in using the word"co-ordination" in connection with transport policy.
I hope that the Rochdale Report will also be considered by the Advisory Council, which is a very high-powered body. It includes not only the heads of the nationalised industries, but a number of other people, including Sir Geoffrey Crowther, Lord Hailsbury, Sir Robert

Hall and Mr. E. G. Whittaker, President of the Institute of Transport and Chairman of the Central Transport Consultative Committee. All these matters should be considered together, as no doubt they will be, with a co-ordinated policy as a result.

Mr. Awbery: Is the hon. Member suggesting public ownership?

Mr. Wilson: The hon. Gentleman must not confuse public ownership with co ordination.

Mr. Awbery: Why not?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. Hon. Members should not have a discussion about public ownership versus private enterprise across the Floor of the House. We should come back to the subject of the Rochdale Report.

Mr. Wilson: There are more than 300 ports in this country and the Rochdale Report selected 15 as major ports. There has been some criticism of it because it also referred to the smaller ports, and its proposals related to them. I was glad that in his opening statement my right hon. Friend indicated that the Rochdale Committee in fact had very wide terms of reference and was entitled to make comments on a very wide range of subjects. Indeed, it was inevitable that the Committee should do so, because we cannot define within narrow limits what is a major port and what is not.
What happens in the smaller ports undoubtedly affects in many instances what happens in the larger ports, and it was inevitable that there should be some provisions in the Report which referred to all the other ports only. This was drawn to my attention by a remark able small port in my constituency. Par, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the English China Clay Ltd., the principal firm in the china clay industry. It is a very prosperous and growing small port which is an integral part of the china clay industry.
I am told that Par is dealing with as many as 18 small ships a day of up to 1,000 tons each and that it is playing a large part in carrying clay to the continental ports. As china clay is a large and important export which is highly competitive, it is necessary that the charges should be kept as low as possible. I can quite understand that the


china clay industry was a bit concerned about how far it would be affected by the recommendations of the Rochdale Committee.
My hon. Friend the Member for King's Lynn (Mr. Bullard) said something about small ports, and I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend, who is to wind up the debate, will say more about them, because their principal concern is the fact that if the new authority has power to regulate charges, a small port which is quite willing and able to keep its charges down to a very low level may find itself priced out of the market, and that would be a most unfortunate thing for a port such as Par which plays a major part in a particular industry. These ports want to be assured that that is not likely to happen.
My hon. Friend also referred to capital development and to the fact that a limited amount would be allowed for expenditure without it being necessary to obtain authority. Any delay in the development of some of these small ports would also cause trouble. If a sum such as, for example, £250,000 could be spent on a particular enterprise without it being necessary to go through the procedure of getting authority for it, then I am sure that many of these ports would be quite satisfied and that it would not interfere with their expansion. Some of them play quite a substantial part in the export trade, and it is important that their interests should not be overlooked when we are thinking of the major interests of the bigger ports.
In general, I support the schemes envisaged by the Rochdale Committee as set out in the statement made by my hon. and gallant Friend on 6th March. There are many points in the Rochdale Report which are of great interest and which will be of great value in the future.

8.34 p.m.

Mr. Guy Barnett: I am grateful to have this opportunity to take part in the debate, even though there is no major port in my constituency. I should like to begin by drawing attention to two points which are raised in the Rochdale Committee's Report and which I think are of paramount importance. The first is that there will be

a great need in the future for deep-water berths, and the second is that ports in which little maintenance dredging is needed are also of great importance to our future port development.
I was shocked on reading the Report to learn that Britain's foreign trade might be doubled by 1980 or even before then. It is important in this respect to bear in mind the gradual expansion that is going on, particularly in our trade with the Continent, and the fact that from 1960 to 1961 there was a 9 per cent. increase in our trade with the Common Market is indicative of this development.
Bearing these important facts in mind, the Committee was obviously right to mention the important advantages which Southampton has: first, its proximity to the northern coast of Europe, and, secondly, its possession of considerable facilities. I do not want to spend time on this because the case for Southampton has been adequately put in the Rochdale Report, and has also been mentioned by the hon. Members for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) and Southampton, Test (Mr. J. Howard).
I want to take this opportunity to draw attention to a harbour which is crying out for development as a major port, but which has not yet received any consideration anywhere, least of all in the Rochdale Report. I am speaking of the harbour of Portland in my constituency, and I want to draw it to the attention of the House because of the points I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, namely, the need for deep-water berths, and the need for harbours which require very little dredging.
I do not know why Portland is not mentioned in the Report, or why the Report has not gone into detail about the possibility of developing new ports. There has been reference in the debate to the remarks of Lord Cooper about the necessity for developing ports which are in existence, but I believe that there is a strong case for looking at Portland as a possible development of the kind that I have in mind.
I mention Portland because it has considerable natural advantages. The Rochdale Committee discusses the possibility of developing new ports. It says that one of the possible advantages of developing a completely new port is that


it might provide something of a laboratory for pioneering new ideas and new methods, and I believe that in this connection, too, Portland has a strong claim to be considered.
At the moment the greater part of the harbour is lying completely idle. A small part of it, on the southernmost side, is occupied by a small Admiralty training establishment; the Portland Stone Company has a small pier, Castle-town Pier, and the yacht club uses part of the harbour. The kind of development that I have in mind will not interfere in any way with the activities and interests that exist in the harbour at the moment.
I come now to some of the specific advantages which I think this harbour possesses. First, it is adequately protected. It has a magnificent natural situation. Portland itself rises to a height of almost 500 ft., and it is protected on the other side by the famous Chesil Bank, and to the north by the mainland. It has artificial breakwaters, two of them about 600 ft. in width, that are capable of being used. It has the remarkable distinction of having a tidal range of only 7 ft., which compares favourably indeed with the 13 ft. tidal range of Southampton Harbour. In addition, it is a harbour of considerable area and remarkable depth. The total area of the harbour is about 4 sq. miles and three sq. miles of these are over 20 ft. in depth, ranging up to 50 ft. in depth.
Moreover, the bottom of the harbour is of a shale type and is stable when dredged. The remarkable fact about the harbour is that no dredging is necessary for maintenance purposes, since no river runs into it. No currents affect the harbour, and further advantages are to be found in its approaches. It is generally free from navigational hazards, and the only hazards that exist—PortlandLedge and Portland Race—are adequately marked. In passing I should mention that the harbour is more fortunate than most other harbours in that it is less affected by fog. It had only five days' fog in 1960, compared with Southampton's 19 and Liverpool's 24. That is a remarkable fact to take into consideration.
I now turn to the problem that has been mentioned by many speakers—a

congested hinterland. Here, Portland is remarkably well off. It would be possible to build a northerly road from Portland, by-passing Weymouth and going directly north to join the projected motorway coming down from Liverpool, via Birmingham and Bristol. Therefore, it would be possible for Portland to serve some of the needs of the industrial Midlands. Secondly, it has direct access to the open sea. It would enable large ocean-going ships to avoid the difficulties of the congested Channel—an area that is likely to become increasingly congested in future—and it is ideally situated for trade with Cherbourg. One has only to look at the map to see that it is almost the ideal spot on our South Coast for such trade.
I could go on to mention further advantages of the location of Portland—constructional advantages in respect of any possible development of a port in that place; the ample supplies of constructional labour that are readily available, arid the ample supplies of suitable material from close to the site which could be used for back-filling, but I do not wish to detain the House longer than I can help because we are nearing the end of the debate.
I want to make it clear that Portland has a harbour capable of increasing the national capacity of deep water berths very considerably. Secondly, we have a harbour where a completely fresh start can be made, with the development of the most modern ideas of handling cargo and turning round ships. In short, we have a laboratory for the development of completely new ideas. In this respect it is not irrelevant to mention the existence of the Winfrith Heath Atomic Energy Establishment, devoted largely to research work, which would be very close and readily available for the development of the nuclear-powered propulsion of ships. This proposal should be seriously considered by the Minister and his Department.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen has mentioned the problem of amenities in connection with Southampton. Quite naturally, since Dorset is an area of considerable natural amenity, it is necessary to mention this important point. The present development of the Chesil Bank region is already such as to add considerably


to the amenities of this interesting natural area, and a proper harbour development, properly planned and carried out, could further add to them, as has already been done at Winfrith Heath, in the construction of the Atomic Energy Establishment. When that proposal was made many people were extremely critical of the possible effect upon the natural beauty of the countryside. But the vast majority of Dorset people would now admit that, if anything, this construction has enhanced the beauty of the area.
The one problem about the possibility of developing the harbour of this extraordinarily attractive natural site is the problem of transport. Given the right inland transport facilities, Portland Harbour would be capable of serving a very wide area. But unfortunately, in Dorset, and I believe I am right in saying in most of the South-West, we are considerably hampered by the lack of proper transport. I mentioned earlier the possibility of a motorway being continued from Bristol down to Portland to carry a great deal of trade from the Midlands straight to a Channel port. I believe that that would be of great value not merely in itself but to the south-west of England as a whole.
The fact has been mentioned frequently in the House that the south-west of England, with its magnificent resources and people, is in danger of becoming a depressed area unless it receives proper attention from the Government. In answer to a Parliamentary Question last February it was stated that the average level of wages in the south-west region of England was 25s. 6d. less than the national average. Opportunities for employment for young people in that part of the world are few and far between, and Portland depends for employment to far too great an extent upon the stone industry. It seems to me that there exists a strong case for the diversity of industry in my constituency and in the South-West.
A development of the kind which I suggest would prove of enormous value to my constituency and to the South-West, because it would provide a growing point for development. It is important to provide in the area a growth point from which development in the whole region can stem. It seems to me that a

harbour at this point, served initially by trains from the Midlands, would give an enormous boost to industry and its development in the South-West which hitherto has been hampered by the lack of transport facilities. I ask the Minister to consider seriously the suggestions which I have made. I would not bring them forward with such confidence if I did not feel that the development of this natural harbour would be of enormous value to the country and the development of industry in the Midlands.

8.48 p.m.

Mr. Donald Box: The hon. Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Barnett) will, I hope, forgive me if I press on without referring to his speech, as time is short.
One of the most gratifying features about the Rochdale Committee's Report is not only the welcome that it has received in this House, but from many quarters connected with docks and shipping throughout the country. As legislation to implement the National Ports Council is bound to take time, I was particularly glad to hear my right hon. Friend say that he intended to put the wheels in motion so that the Council would be able to take preliminary steps to set up research and study groups to deal with some of the more urgent aspects of the Committee's Report.
As my right hon. Friend is aware—perhaps my hon. and gallant Friend the Parliamentary Secretary is also aware, because of correspondance passing between me and the Ministry—the composition of the Council is causing a great deal of apprehension in the South Wales area. It is accepted that ports cannot expect to be represented area by area. But it is felt that the Council should include someone with a specialised knowledge of the problems and special characteristics of the South Wales ports.
It is, therefore, with a slight tinge of disappointment that we note that although we have a member to represent Bristol, nobody who is actually from the South Wales ports is included. As one or two positions remain to be filled, I hope that my right hon. Friend will give this matter sympathetic consideration, as it is causing very considerable apprehension in South Wales.
The decision to make the appointments to this National Ports Council in advance of legislation will be generally welcomed, and nowhere more than in the Bristol Channel area, for the current delay in deciding the future pattern of these ports is causing a great deal of uncertainty there. That is having a prejudicial effect on development plans, because until the Government, or the Council, are able to make definite decisions as to the future pattern of our ports, the Docks Board will obviously be quite unable to proceed with any major expenditure on modernisation, repair, or replacement of obsolete equipment. My hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) told us in some detail of the difficulties Barry is in, where developments are at a complete standstill pending a definite decision on its future.
The Bristol Channel ports are among the few about which the Report makes very definite recommendations on regrouping and closure. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that there is not the same degree of uncertainty apparent in some of the other ports, from which it follows that the Bristol Channel ports are entitled to some priority when the Council gets down to work. It would be idle to pretend that even when these decisions are reached they will be universally popular—that is almost too much to ask for—but the present mood, particularly in the South Wales area, is that some sort of decision is preferable to the present state of uncertainty.
For instance, the recommendation that Bristol and Newport should be grouped together under one new Upper Bristol Channel Port Trust is strongly opposed by experts in the area, who take the view that this might well have an adverse effect on the other ports in the Bristol Channel. I think that I speak for them generally when I say that they would prefer to see all the Bristol Channel ports—with the possible exception of Port Talbot, which is a special case—grouped under a single Bristol Channel Port Authority.
While it is obvious that the South Wales ports have a good deal of surplus capacity at present—and this is especially mentioned in the Report—there are a number of reasons for what I would describe as measured optimism about the future prospects of the area. First, there

is the general recovery which is taking place in snipping which, although it has not been very great so far, at least seems to be getting the industry out of the depths of depression.
Secondly, there is the unprecedented improvement of road communications. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend is not in the Chamber at present, because he gets plenty of brickbats and I wanted to throw him a small bouquet. The tremendous improvement in road communications between London and South Wales can be seen by anyone who travels along those roads. We are looking forward to a close link with the west of England by the Severn Bridge, a link that will be extended to London and the southern counties when we get the M.4 motorway. We also have the advantage of two motorways, the one from the Midlands to Cardiff and Newport, and the other to West Wales and Swansea by the Heads of the Valleys road. That will make for a vast and continuing improvement in the industrial activity of South Wales during the next few years.
Thirdly, I would list the gradual build-up of general cargo and the oil trade which we are, of course, encouraging to replace the diminishing coal trade on which the South Wales ports were originally established. It is in this general cargo sphere that we can reasonably expect to see the most worth-while improvement over the next few years. As these ports in South Wales were capable of dealing, hi the Bristol Channel as a whole, with more than one-third of all the general cargo handled during the last war, their ability to deal with a great increase on the general cargo side is without doubt.
Unfortunately, in this general cargo sphere, a sort of vicious circle has existed for some time past. I mean by that that manufacturers in the Midlands have been unwilling and reluctant to send cargoes to the South Wales ports until they could provide adequate facilities for ships to collect the cargoes from them. Equally, the British Transport Commission, now the Docks Board, has consistently refused to spend considerable sums on modernisation and improving the port handling facilities until they could be guaranteed that they would get the cargo.
Somehow this impasse must be broken, otherwise I foresee that these valuable


assets are liable to sink into a state of complete stagnation. That is hardly a healthy prospect for a series of assets which not only have a considerable individual value but an even greater replacement value, and which also are assets, I would remind hon. Members, in which we all have a very considerable financial interest.
The whole of Chapter 14 of the Rochdale Report is devoted to the question of charges. I was most interested in what my right hon. Friend said on this matter, because it is of fundamental importance to the South Wales ports. At present, as a result of customs and restrictions that have grown up over many years—restrictive practices, if you like—there is such a wide variation in the rates and conditions applying that it is virtually impossible to draw a true comparison between the charges at the various ports.
Although I gather from the Report that complete standardisation is virtually impossible—indeed, undesirable, because it might remove an element of healthy competition—it seems that a fresh start is required by the shipping companies in this respect. I would emphasise that South Wales does not seek preferential treatment. All it seeks is a fair crack of the whip. I am glad to see the Rochdale Report urges the shipping companies to set about removing some of the anomalies and I hope that this will be given priority when the National Ports Council sits.
I sum up by saying that the three most important things that we in the Bristol Channel and the South Wales ports want to see is this element of South Wales representation which we feel is essential on the National Ports Council to deal with the problems of a special character to the area; a priority decision on the future of those reports about which there have been recommendations for regrouping and in some cases closure; and the all-important and vital question of the division of port jobs.
I recognise that this is a great deal to ask for. I know that my right hon. Friend will give all these points sympathetic consideration. If he is able to reassure me and some of my hon. Friends and do anything to remove some of the genuine apprehension that exists, I can assure him he will earn the undying

gratitude of the docks interest in the Bristol Channel area.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. R. J. Mellish: Mr. R. J. Mellish (Bermondsey) rose—

Mr. W. A. Wilkins: On a point of order. Would my hon. Friend allow me one minute to register a protest in the strongest possible terms at the fact that Bristol—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. This is quite out of order. The hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins) is not in possession of the Floor. Mr. Mellish.

Mr. Mellish: I am sorry that my hon. Friend was not called. This is the sort of debate in which individual hon. Members have views and interests at constituency level to express and I understand that apart from those who have spoken there were about 30 hon. Members present who had expressed a wish to speak. I understand how my hon. Friend feels, because his own activities in the House in the interests of his constituency speak for themselves. I hope that when we have new legislation and a Second Reading and all that will flow from that, we shall hear from my hon. Friend to great effect.

Mr. Wilkins: Will my hon. Friend forgive me again? I would not take this strong exception were it not for the fact that two hon. Members from two cities have shared between them 48 minutes and 33 minutes, when the voice of the great city which I represent has not been heard.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order.

Mr. Mellish: I know how my hon. Friend feels. I am trying to do the job of the Chair as well as mine. I am doing all right.
All who have spoken in the debate have started by congratulating Lord Rochdale and his Committee. I join them. This is a wonderfully written Report. It is one of the best Reports of the kind that I have ever read. Most Government documents are not easy to read, but I found this Report fascinating, though perhaps I may have some prejudice in the matter in that it is about an industry which means a great deal to me.
I am happy about the Report because this is the first time in years that we have


been able to discuss the docks industry without being under the shadow of an unofficial dispute. Every time that we have talked about the docks in the past it has been because there has been a dispute of one kind or another, usually in London, and then there has been a White Paper and a committee of inquiry and, finally, a debate. This is the first time that we have been able to talk about the docks without any of these troubles.
I am delighted to take the opportunity, first of all, of taking sides with my hon. Friend the Member for Stepney (Mr. W. Edwards) in paying some tribute to the industry as it is today. We make a great mistake if we let it go out from the House that somehow the British docks industry is now badly run, that it is an industry almost dying of decay, that the whole industry is riddled with restrictive practices and that hardly anybody is doing any work. This is one of the mistakes we make in Britain. We take a great pleasure in denigrating our people and some of our great industries. The Rochdale Report gives us a chance to say that the British docks industry is an industry of which we can be justly proud.
The Minister referred to his trips to Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg. These ports are rather lucky, and Hamburg in particular because Germany lost the war. We had the misfortune, as I think at times, to win it. Our docks industry, though badly bomb-damaged, was not completely wiped out as was the case in Hamburg and from 1945 onwards we had to make do as best we could. I should like to put on record what the industry has achieved before we debate the Rochdale Report and the future.
It should be clearly understood that from 1951 to 1961 there has been a 12 per cent. increase in productivity in the British docks industry, with about 10,000 fewer men employed in it. This is not a mean achievement. It is a pretty wonderful achievement considering the difficulties experienced immediately after the war. It is a record of which we can well be proud. There are gangs in the London Docks today which I know and which are beyond comparison with any gangs of workmen in the world. The rate at which sugar is discharged in the

Royal group of docks is the fastest in the world. There are many gangs of that specialist character in the docks which are the finest not only in Europe but anywhere.
Reference is often made to the fact that the dock industry is one of great tradition, full of restrictive practices and that no mechanical aids are ever used. One gets the impression that all the men are still pushing trucks, that no one has ever heard of a crane and that all the dockers are working in Victorian conditions. It is not true. The docker is not that sort of person at all. There are at present in the London group of docks 753 cranes, eight grain elevators and 246 electric trucks—some of the best mechanical equipment that any industry could hope to have.
The dock worker is not against using new mechanical aids. What he is against is the odd management and the way in which it tries to introduce these aids. I know of one firm—I will not mention its name—which tried to introduce fork lift trucks. The firm bought 20 of them. They were brought along one Monday morning and the employees were told that as from that moment they were to use them but that the number in a gang would be reduced from 12 to six. I can tell the Minister that these trucks have not yet come out of their packing cases. That is the last way to introduce mechanical equipment, and I know the Minister will agree. Any management which tries to impose upon the men new equipment which will create redundancy is asking for trouble in dockland.

Mr. Marples: And elsewhere.

Mr. Mellish: Yes, and elsewhere.
Of course, this is an industry of great tradition, and we criticise it in this House. I do not know why we criticise it in this House, of all places. Mr. Speaker himself uses phrases which are used in dockland. He uses the phrase"the custom and practice of this House". That is exactly what they say in dock land—"the custom and practice of this industry." The term"custom and practice" is not only used by the men. It is used by the management, very much so. Whenever it suits the management it always refers to the"custom and practice".
One thing that I want to get on the record is that the dock worker has a


history which we cannot ignore when we discuss Rochdale. Anyone who believes that this Report will lead almost overnight to a settlement of these problems is making a mistake. My own fatter was a dock worker. He was a great man. He was in the 1889 dispute and the story that he told me has eaten into my soul—27 weeks on strike without a single penny from anybody. This is an industry whose bitter record one cannot ignore.
I understand the dock worker when he talks of yesteryear. I understand him when he refers to the principle of"one out, all out." The only quarrel I have with the docker today—I have said it so often—is that it is a wonderful principle, providing the first one out is right. The principle of"one out, all out" is one which I hope the dockers will not depart from. Whatever happens in the future, the right of the dock worker to withdraw his labour will always exist, and this must always be so if the trade unions mean anything at all.
We have to instill in the dock worker confidence in tomorrow. This is an absolute"must". This is how we must approach the whole subject. Whatever we do in the future, under whatever system is established, the National Dock Labour Board must stay. Even if we have a system where there is full permanency of employment, the National Dock Labour Board will be required, because if we have a permanent labour force we shall have to have movement of that force. It will have to be transferable, if only in sectors.
It is madness to try to transfer men from one port to another or from one dock to another. By the time the men are collected in the morning, taken by coach to their place of employment and have settled down, half the morning has gone. By the time they are collected in the afternoon and are brought back, because they have to finish at 5 o'clock, half the afternoon has gone. Let us have sense in this. We have to have mobility, but within sectors and within the framework of the National Dock Labour Board which should be used as the agent for such movement. The National Dock Labour Board must stay. The men themselves are determined that it is a part of dockland which they will never give up. For one thing, as my hon. Friend

the Member for Stepney said, for the first time in their lives it gives them some semblance of a secure wage.
Those who complain about the National Dock Labour Board's present set-up on the disciplinary side, for instance, make a very great mistake if they think that the men believe that having trade union representatives on the disciplinary committee is wrong. I assure the House that when any individual considers the question he is the first to agree, as all in dockland agree, on the right of the trade unions to be on the Board which does the discipline. This is a necessary part of dockland. The workers would never trust any disciplinary body which had none of their representatives there.
What of the future? The Rochdale Report is a magnificent contribution to our discussions now and in considering legislation which is to come. But I hope that the House will not talk as though Rochdale will be the Bible now and forever in dockland. I say that with no disrespect to his Lordship. It is a magnificent Report. What has been produced by the Committee in under 18 months is quite extraordinary. But this does not mean that the Report is gospel. It is the basis for legislation. It is the basis for our consideration of what should be done in the future.
In my view, there are weaknesses in the Report. I do not complain. No one could expect any report to be perfect. I will give an illustration of one way in which, I think, the Report falls down badly. It makes hardly any mention of the lighterage industry. As one who has lived and worked in dockland for a great part of his life, I cannot understand why lighterage is not dealt with much more fully. One would think that it had no future. Outside this building passes the greatest highway in the world, the River Thames. It is almost empty now every day. This is one of the saddest things that could ever happen. Somehow, we must try to get traffic back on to the river and try to get more lighterage used for carrying heavy cargoes. Let us consider how we can make it more efficient and cheaper. How can we attract more traffic to the river? These are some of the questions which Rochdale should have tackled, but it virtually dismisses lighterage as of no consequence.
I do not like the Committee's defeatist attitude to coastal shipping. I am not talking party politics in this debate. We can have the politics some other time, as the Minister knows very well. But, surely, no hon. Member can be anything but unhappy about the present plight of coastal shipping. This is one of the reasons why many of our small ports are almost dying today. If coastal shipping were thriving, it could take a great deal of traffic off the roads, just as the lighterage industry could if it were carrying cargoes, as it should, on our great rivers. Just consider the enormous amount of traffic which would be taken off the roads. This is simple enough, yet hardly any emphasis is given to it in the Rochdale Report.
This brings me to what I regard as the fundamental argument. We cannot talk about the docks in isolation. We tried it with the railways. I do not deny that Dr. Beeching's Report has its value, although I disagree with many of its conclusions. It is the same with Rochdale. Many of the recommendations are valuable, but one does not necessarily agree with everything. We have to talk about transport as a whole.
It is on this point that what my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) said is so relevant. We need to know what are the problems of the docks for today and for tomorrow. We need to know what are the problems of the roads and the railways for today and for tomorrow. With the knowledge we gain in that way, perhaps we shall be able to devise an overall national transport plan. It could be done. I am sorry if this sounds too simple. I believe it to be of the utmost importance that we consider transport as a whole, not looking at each part in isolation.
What about the responsibilities of the Ministry of Transport? Already it is far too busy a Department. In my view, we ask far too much of it. With all the problems coming on to it almost daily I am amazed that it can do any work or real thinking at all. I should have thought that the time was coming fast when the problems of shipping and the docks should be taken away from the Ministry of Transport and given to an entirely separate Department. I do not mind whether we give it some other title

but certainly this important part of our transport industry should be under a separate Ministry.
If the Rochdale recommendations are to become a reality, we must consider again the question of decasualisation. I said that my father was a docker. He was"casual" all his life. He never knew what a permanent job was. He was employed by the means of overnight selection which led to favouritism and trouble and, more often than not, unemployment. As he was the father of 10 children and very rarely got a full day's work, hon. Members will understand why I think that decasualisation is a must. However, I agree that to say it is one thing and that to achieve it is another.
The men are dubious about decasualisation unless it is done in a way which gives them the stability which they have a right to expect. I pay tribute to Mr. O'Leary, the national secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union. He is a very shrewd, intelligent trade union officer. He is trying very hard to put the position in dockland so that the men may have the stability which they have a right to expect. I say this to the dockers. Let us consider some of the figures in the Rochdale Report concerning the trade in dockland of tomorrow. We know that, given normal growth in Britain, it is certain that by 1980 there will be twice the amount of work in dockland as there is today.
If we can get a labour force which is guaranteed a full week's wages, if we can get employers to consider the possibility of breaking down, which I think can be done, some of the so-called seasonal arrangements with which we are plagued—this can be done, as I hope to show, with regard to timber—if we can guarantee the men permanency of labour, provided on their part, within sectors, there is mobility with the men moving from one firm to another, and if we can assure them that redundancy will be dealt with by normal wastage, there will be a desire by the men for decasualisation. Once that is allied to pension schemes and sickness benefit schemes, and so on, we shall have the continuity of dock work which we all want to see and which most of the men want to see.

Mr. Graham Page: The hon. Gentleman has referred to men moving between firms. But surely that would not work. Larger firms are required so that the men may move within a large firm.

Mr. Mellish: I meant within sectors, moving from one wharf, say, to another or men moving from one part of a dock to another.

Mr. Page: With loyalty to the firm?

Mr. Mellish: It is not so much a question of loyalty to a firm. It is loyalty to an industry which is important to me. If it were decided that men were required in another part of the sector, there would be no hesitancy on the men's part to go there.
There is great responsibility on management with regard to seasonal trade. One of the biggest problems is the fluctuations in trade which cause casual labour. There is a peak when a certain number of workers are needed. Then in the winter there is a great fall in demand and thousands of men are out of work.
Is it not possible to have some arrangement by which timber can come into this country at a more even flow? There is the largest timber dock in Britain in my constituency. So much comes in during certain months, which is stored in lighters, in barges. Dozens of barges are used for this purpose. Then when the peak is reached in general cargo there are not enough lighters. Whose fault is that? It is nothing to do with the men. They only do what they are told, but they are aware of what goes on.
I regard this as mismanagement of the worst kind. It is beyond the wit of man to devise a scheme by which timber can come in with more regularity? If that sort of good will was shown, particularly by the employers, we could overcome many of the seasonal problems.
As to the publicly-owned ports, the Rochdale Committee dealt harshly with the British Transport docks. Quite illogically, as has been said often enough today, the Report commends the Transport Commission for its magnificent job in taking over the docks which were losing £1½ million a year and putting them by 1961 in the position of showing a credit of £4½ million, but then says, in

effect, that the Docks Board should go. Many of us, on both sides, will not regard that suggestion with favour.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall that if there are to be groupings of various ports—I do not say that there should not be—it would not be a bad thing to hand over to the British Transport Docks Board those docks which are not in its possession. The Docks Board has proved its competence. Municipal ports are proving their competence. Our yardstick should be not whether a dock is making a profit but whether those who have been running the docks generally overall are competent to run them.
I ask the Minister to take it from us on this side that when new legislation is introduced, in whatever form, we shall need very much to ensure that at the end of the day we get the chance here in the House of Commons to say something about which ports are being grouped, where and how they should be grouped and under what form of management. We have a right to do that. We are representatives of every dock and port in the country and we have a right to express our views.
I ask the Minister, when introducing legislation, to bear in mind that we here will need to have the right of deciding. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be good enough to deal with this in his reply tonight and that we may be given assurances that we shall have the right on an affirmative Resolution, for example, to decide whether certain proposals made by the new National Ports Council are to be effective.
I should like to say a word also about the financial aspect. The Minister talked about a minimum amount. He did not mention a figure, but he said that he hoped that a minimum amount of money would be given to a particular port or ports, which they would decide for themselves how best to use via the new National Ports Council. I have heard it said here today in discussion with some of my hon. Friends that the Minister earlier spoke of a figure in the region of £½ million. I hope that this is true.

Mr. Marples: I deliberately refrained from mentioning a figure, but I said that I hoped that the figure above which the permission of the National Ports Council


would be necessary would be a reasonably high one, so that there would not be any interference with the day-to-day management of a port.

Mr. Mellish: I sincerely hope that we will soon be told what the figure is and that it is the kind of figure which will allow port responsibility and administration to continue without being subject all the time to asking the Minister for permission. This is essential for day-to day management.
On the wider schemes, I should like to re-emphasise what my right hon. Friend said. The Council may well decide that it is essential for a certain scheme to be followed by a certain port, but it may have good logical reasons for refusing to implement such a scheme. Therefore, it must be laid down in the legislation that the port will have the right to ask the Minister to act as arbitrator and to decide who is right, whether it be the National Ports Council or the port in question.
To be fair to the Rochdale Committee, it has expressed its views as a consequence not of negotiations with the various port authorities but as a result of various questions that were answered and what the Committee has seen for itself. I do not think that Lord Rochdale and his colleagues would claim to be experts and knowledgeable on the docks after one year. I am sure he would concede that in London, Hull, Liverpool and Glasgow, for example, there are people working in the industry, both in management and on the trade union side, who even now would claim to know nearly as much of the dock industry as Lord Rochdale himself.
I hope, therefore, that the National Ports Council will remember that if it is to succeed and to do its job properly, it is not any good having a dictatorship which says,"This is what you have got to do". Anybody who tried that attitude in the dock industry would come badly unstuck. Probably the Minister may never be bothered with any of these schemes. Of course, the present Minister may not be here to arbitrate. He may not be here, and I hope he will not. He understands what I mean. But, in fact, the Minister, whoever he may be, may not be asked to arbitrate, but there ought

to be power for the individual docks managements to go to him and put to him any question when there is not any agreement between them and the National Ports Council itself. That will help to make for good will and understanding.
As to the membership, which has already been announced, I must say I am not very happy about it. I speak for myself about this. I have no authority to speak for any body about this. I hope that the trade union representative from the Weavers Association quickly gets to know about the dock industry. I hope that some of those already appointed will get quickly into the confidence of everybody in the docks industry. It is most important that they should. It is a most important industry, and the Council is a very important body, and it is important that there should be confidence felt in it by all those in the industry—confidence that the people on the Council know what they are about and are doing the right thing. Unless we get that confidence at a very early stage the organisation will not work.
No matter how much we here talk about planning it is of no good unless the planners themselves know what planning is all about and what its final objectives are, and are doing their job. I hope that the Minister, when there are vacancies to be filled—and I am not thinking of myself: I do not want to be considered for a job—will find people who are respected by the industry as a whole. We gather already from Members for South Wales that there is already objection to the Council membership. That is a good start, I must say. We must overcome objections of this sort. Of course, we could hardly ask that every area of this Britain of ours should be represented on a Council of this kind.
I want to conclude what I have to say on this matter in this way. The Rochdale Report is a magnificent report and provides an excellent vehicle for a debate on dockland without any official dispute. I think it spotlights the fact that in the dock industry of this country we have an industry of which we can well be proud, which has done a magnificent job. I say so sincerely. I have a big enough majority to be able to say nasty things about dockers and still get elected, but I honestly think that the dock worker is a man of whom this country can be


proud. He has got an enormous amount of courage. Sometimes he is foolish, but I think that can be said of most of us anyway. He is a man with tremendous courage and works in an industry which has a fine record. There are things in it of which we can feel ashamed, but it is an industry of which in some respects we can feel very proud.
I think we want fewer employers in the industry. There are too many, and far too many who make no contribution and who must go, employers in London and elsewhere whose contribution to this great industry is negligible. We want to see fewer groupings of employers, which the men can understand and respect and which will guarantee the dockers, their wives and families the sort of life they are entitled to expect. If we can get that sort of foundation it will enable the industry to work very well and to be one of which we can be proud.

9.28 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Vice-Admiral John Hughes Hallett): I am sure that the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) did well to remind us that there is a bright side to the record of the dock industry, and was right, also, to consider the matter of dock labour, which is, admittedly, one of the great keys to the efficiency of the industry. If I do not follow him on that side of his speech it is not because I underestimate the importance of it, but because the changes we are considering tonight, and which stem from the recommendations of the Rochdale Committee, do not, in the main, relate to labour organisation.
I should like to thank all the hon. Members who have taken part in this debate. The Report raises issues which were novel to this country. By accepting the recommendations in principle, at least for the most part, we have really embarked on a new course, and we value the combined wisdom of the House in helping us to avoid such dangers as lie ahead, and, what is more, in overcoming the sort of opposition which is inevitable whenever an old and respected institution stands in need of reform. May I, first, emphasise what is not at stake? There is no question of nationalization or denationalisation in the true sense. With one single exception, all the great ports in this country are already publicly

owned. They will remain publicly owned. Whether that ownership is direct ownership by the Crown, ownership by a municipality, or ownership by a public trust, or by a combination of all three perhaps, is really of secondary importance. What matters, and what will be at stake, is the degree to which we rely upon centralised control as against regional control.
However, another important point was raised with which I should like to deal at this stage, namely, our reluctance to take powers to compel a port authority to undertake schemes in which the authority may have no confidence or to which it is opposed. This is not only a hypothetical, but an extremely unlikely contingency. In my experience, most human beings, whether corporate or single, are only too pleased to do anything which enlarges their sphere of influence or enables them to spend more money than they have hitherto had. However, I have a powerful imagination, and I can imagine a situation such as the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) postulated.
But I ask the House: if this were to happen, would it be sensible to force a reluctant authority to spend its own money, or wise to give it public money, to undertake something which it said it did not believe in? One has the analogy, a not uncommon analogy, in time of war, when a general sometimes makes it plain that he completely mistrusts the plan which he has been given to carry out. I would say that there is only one prudent course to adopt. Either one must admit that the general is right and abandon the plan, or one must change the general. In the context we are considering tonight one has to imagine a major clash, and if the Government of the day were determined to go forward it would be necessary to reconstitute the authority, and without doubt that issue would have to be brought before Parliament. That is my answer to the point which the right hon. Gentleman made.

Mr. Strauss: May I ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman for a further explanation? I appreciate the point. What the Parliamentary Secretary means is that if we had an occasion when it appeared that a port authority was frustrating the national interest the Government would,


in those conditions, then come to Parliament and ask for power to deal with the situation, and would, in fact, force the Minister's decision on a new port authority. Is that not correct?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I cannot, needless to say, commit any Government, not even the present one, let alone Governments of the future. We are talking about something in the future. But that is what I imagine would happen. I cannot see that there would be any other way of dealing with a situation of that nature.
I think that there is wide acceptance of the major premise of the Rochdale Report, that the future development of our ports should take place within the framework of a national plan, and I hope that we have carried the House with us in the idea of implementing that plan through the control of capital investment. But that, as I hinted before, still leaves room for widely varying opinions about the degree of regional grouping which is desirable, and about the extent to which authorities which may be set up to manage such groupings should be autonomous, or, alternatively, should be subject to control from a board in Whitehall.
This, as hon. Gentlemen have pointed out, is a question which particularly concerns the group of ports now managed and administered by the British Transport Docks Board. These docks, as we all know, are directly owned by the Crown. In most cases, and indeed, I think, in all cases where large ports are involved, the Docks Board is essentially a docks authority in the literal sense of the term. There are, for example, a separate harbour authority at Southampton and a separate conservancy board for the Humber Estuary, and even in the South Wales ports there are a number of extraneous authorities.
Experience has shown that the system of having a local general manager responsible to a central authority in London has worked fairly well, but whether it would be equally satisfactory if the Board exercised powers as comprehensive as those advocated in the Rochdale Report is another matter, and that is why my right hon. Friend said that he would accept the idea of autonomous boards where these are likely to promote efficiency.
We shall need to take advice, judging each particular case on its merits, and we think that it would be altogether premature to reach conclusions now. After all, the setting up of large estuarial authorities is bound to take time and we think that it would be quite wrong, and indeed quite impracticable, to try to commit subsequent Parliaments and Administrations to any fixed pattern. Indeed, the only point on which I would be definite is that we must at all costs try to avoid duplication or overlapping powers.
Perhaps it would be for the convenience of the House if I now replied to some of the questions about individual ports. I must say at once, however, that I cannot give assurances concerning the future of any particular port. After all, the main purpose of setting up the National Ports Council is to seek its advice on this very point, and it would be quite wrong to prejudge what that advice may be or what decisions may be taken by future Governments when that advice is tendered.
I can, however, repeat what my right hon. Friend said about schemes in hand of imminent. Although we shall consult the Council, we see no risk that this will involve any appreciable delay. I know that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Hoy) may say that that is just what is happening in the case of Leith, so perhaps I may deal with that case first.
As the hon. Member said, three years ago the Leith Harbour Commission produced an imaginative plan to convert Leith into a deep water port at a cost of about £4 million. Unfortunately, it could not be established that there would be a sufficient return on this capital investment in the foreseeable future, with the result that, from the beginning, the project was dependent upon a Government grant. The Rochdale Committee looked into the matter and reported, as the hon. Member fairly said, that this expenditure would provide a greater degree of desirable development than could be obtained in any other Firth of Forth port for a similar sum—or indeed, any other port on the East Coast. However, the hon. Member stopped at that point in his quotation from the Report. It actually went on to express the view


that the scheme would be justified provided that Scottish industry can and must be expanded, with a corresponding increase in deep sea trade.
In the meantime, the Docks Board has produced a scheme for developing Grange mouth at a higher cost, although it must, in fairness, be added that some of the expenditure there will be necessary in any case. But granting that some development of port capacity in the Firth of Forth is needed, it remains to be decided at which port or ports it should take place. This partly depends on technical considerations, on which we have a firm opinion in the Rochdale Report—indeed, before that—and partly on the future needs of Scottish industry.
After consulting with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, and with the agreement of Lord Rochdale, we have, therefore, asked all the local authorities and boards who are interested for their opinions. We have asked for their views not only on whether and where development should take place, but also, as the hon. Member said, on the best form of port organisation for the Forth Estuary. We shall refer their replies to the National Ports Council and seek its advice.
As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, I sympathise with the Leith Harbour Commission, which is chafing at this delay. I think that it was very forgiving of its members to invite me to have refreshments with them when I went there a month ago. I accept that there may, in future, be quite exceptional cases in which it will be in the national interest to make a direct grant towards a port development scheme. I would, however, remind the House that this is something which has never before been done in time of peace.
I hope that the House, including the hon. and learned Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine), will agree that we must be very careful about setting a precedent in this matter and that the time needed to obtain and to co-ordinate the opinion of the local interests in the Firth of Forth will be time well spent.
My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Webster) said something about Bristol and I am certain that the hon. Member for Bristol, South

(Mr. Wilkins), had he caught the eye of the Chair, would also have had a great deal to say about Bristol, very probably on similar lines. I was asked by my hon. Friend to say how our new policy will affect the scheme being considered by the Port of Bristol Authority for a new dock at Portbury. No doubt if the Authority decides to go ahead it will in due course promote a Private Bill in Parliament to give effect to the scheme. In considering the terms of its report to Parliament the Ministry will naturally have the advice of the National Ports Council, and that is how the Council will come into the picture before we have new legislation. On the other hand, the Bristol Authority's scheme can go forward in the normal way on its merits, and it need take no longer to process than it would have done before the existence of the Council.
One hon. Member for Bristol, in an interjection when my right hon. Friend was speaking, asked for an assurance that the port will not be taken away from the city. Let me say at once that we are fully alive to the advantages of municipal ownership in cases in which a port plays a dominant part in the social and economic life of a town. As has been pointed out, these advantages have been strikingly exemplified by the success story of Bristol down the years. There is also the evidence—and again this point was made—of the great Continental ports. Not least among these advantages—I do not think that this point was made—is the scope which municipal control offers for the interests of the dock workers to be effectively heard on the board of management. I feel that for these reasons any future Government would need most cogent arguments before agreeing to take the port of Bristol out of the hands of the City. Nevertheless, that does not mean that there is no case for adjusting the membership of the board so as to provide for a greater representation of those who use the port.
I am sure that no one was surprised when my hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) demanded assurances that that port would not be closed. I must say that while he was speaking I was rather moved by the agonised expression on the face of my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Hugh Rees), condemned in this place to silence, as his hon. Friend extolled the superior


advantages of Barry. We are aware that the closure of Barry would be opposed by all the local interests. We are also aware that the trade of the port has risen substantially in the last 18 months. While I cannot give the assurance quite in the definite terms sought by my hon. Friend, I can tell him that no decision will be made without the most careful investigation by the National Ports Council, in consultation with the local authorities, with the interests concerned, and with the Welsh Office. Perhaps I should add that this also applies to the other South Wales ports. I hope that this will go some way towards allaying the anxiety of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box).

Mr. Mellish: Surely that would also apply to every port which was to be closed, would it not?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: As the hon. Member rightly said, it would apply to any port which was to be closed, but I shall have a little more to say later about the position of ports which do not pay which may go a little further to allay my hon. Friend's anxieties.
I listened with great interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. J. Howard) and the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchem (Dr. King). We agree, in general, with what they say about the possible expansion of Southampton. As they know, the Docks Board has asked my right hon. Friend to approve a £3 million modernisation scheme and at the same time it is studying the possibilities of major development in the port involving new dry cargo berthage at a cost of about £20 million. This will have to be considered in due course by the Council.
The hon. and learned Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill was disappointed at the Rochdale Report not recommending expansion on the Mersey. My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) was more than disappointed, he was angry, but I think the position at the moment is that Liverpool is drawing breath after the completion of the great Canada Langton dock modernisation scheme. I can give the assurance that as far as the Government are concerned the future is still open. As my right hon. Friend said, we have asked all ports to let us have their ideas on future

development, and these will be sent to the National Ports Council and will be studied and discussed.

Mr. A. J. Irvine: Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman go a little further than that? He is aware that in the Rochdale Report the development of the facilities at Liverpool takes a low place in the order of priorities, relative to Tilbury, Southampton, Leith, and so on. Surely the hon. and gallant Gentleman will take this opportunity of dissociating the Government from that order of priority?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I do not think that it is necessary either to dissociate or otherwise. The point is that the hon. and learned Gentleman must not assume that this first examination in the Rochdale Report will necessarily conform to the conclusions reached by the National Ports Council. They are two separate things.
The hon. Member for Stepney (Mr. W. Edwards) regretted the impending closure of the St. Katharine docks. As I understand it, he accepts the decision about the St. Katharine docks, but is protesting against closing London docks. Here again, we can be sure that no one will compel the Port of London Authority to close those docks. The National Ports Council can only advise over that matter. It would be going beyond its prospective powers for it to interfere in the activities of a particular authority in that negative way, so the matter will fall to be decided in the ordinary way by the Port of London Authority.
The hon. and gallant Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Commander Pursey) spoke with great knowledge about the facilities of Hull. I have assured him in correspondence, and I repeat the assurance now, that his representations will be carefully considered by the Docks Board, but the issues he raised are essentially matters of management and it would not be right for me to intervene in detailed questions which I would be the last to pretend to understand.

Commander Pursey: Surely, as regards these four coal hoists, it can be said that while the present rate of coal exported from Hull is running at a rate of 1 million tons a year the two coal hoists which were to be demolished will not be demolished until further consideration has been given to retaining them for future use?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: The hon. and gallant Gentleman may be right, but that cannot be said by me. We have set up these Boards with certain powers and it would ill become any Minister of the Crown to lay down the law about what they do.
The hon. Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Barnett) spoke about the tremendous value of Portland Harbour. From a seafarer's point of view, the hon. Gentleman was speaking to the converted. I remember, during my life in the Navy, making use of Portland. It is Admiralty-owned, and perhaps that is why the Rochdale Committee did not deal with it, but I am sure that the National Ports Council will consider what the hon. Gentleman said. I am bound to say that he put up a strong prima facie case to back the attractions and advantages of developing Portland as a commercial harbour.

Mr. Barnett: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman confirm that amongst the powers of the new National Ports Council there will be power to recommend to the Minister the opening of ports which do not at present exist? This is not mentioned in the recommendations.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: It would be within the Council's power to recommend it. What will come of the recommendations is another matter.
I come now to say a word about small ports, because my hon. Friends the Member for Test, King's Lynn (Mr. Bullard) and Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) referred to them. Fears have been expressed concerning the future of some of them, especially some of the privately-owned ones. We have no intention that control through capital investment should be used as a means of throttling the small ports. The control will apply, as my right hon. Friend said, to major projects as measured on a national scale. Neither shall we allow State-owned ports to cut their charges to an uneconomic level in order to capture trade from the independents. There is no reason for fearing that this will be attempted in the future.
I now turn to more general problems. The right hon. Member for Vauxhall asked me about the chairman, and whether he would be full time. The answer is,"No", at any rate, not at present. It is Lord Rochdale's view that it is better for all the members of the Council in the first instance to be part-

time, although the chairman will have to give a good deal more of his time than the other members of the Board. We shall have to see how we get on. But a full-time director-general will be appointed to the staff working under the National Ports Council.
I want to say a quick word about ports which cannot pay their way. In practice, this question chiefly concerns ports which are State-owned, because privately-owned or independent ports cannot run for long if they do not pay their way. When the Docks Board ports were taken over from the railway companies after the war they were running collectively at a loss. It was largely thanks to the genius of the late Sir Robert Letch—to whose memory I should like to pay a deeply sincere tribute—that this loss was turned into an operating profit for the group as a whole. The differences in profitability between individual ports have not hitherto been revealed in the accounts.
Since last January the group has been under the newly created Docks Board, whose able and energetic chairman, Sir Arthur Kirby, has publicly announced that in future the accounts will show the varying fortunes of each of the ports in the group. It will be the aim of the Docks Board to make each port viable, although this by no means excludes treating a group of ports in the same region as a single financial entity. It would be dangerous to milk ports in one part of the country to nourish ports in a different part of the country, with which they have no connection.
It may be asked whether there are not circumstances in which a port which does not pay should be kept open. We believe that the answer depends on the reason for wishing to keep it open. If there were a genuine national interest—such as defence—a port might be kept open at the national expense. If the reason were a local one, such as the effect on a town or city of closing its port, the local authority should decide whether it is willing to bear the burden. In the case of some municipally-owned ports this already happens. If, as is also sometimes the case at present, the existence of a port is essential for a particular industry or firm, that interest must decide whether it is willing to keep the port going. So long as those


interested in keeping a port open are willing to do this it would not be in our minds to close it.
Dock labour is not one of the functions of the National Ports Council. The National Joint Council for the Port Transport Industry and the National Dock Labour Board already cover the field. But I would say, in passing, how much I agree with those hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Vauxhall and the hon. Member for Bermondsey, about the importance of getting on with decasualisation. We share their disappointment at the frustration and delays that have taken place.
I want to say a word about the radar information services, which have been so successfully established at Liverpool, Southampton, London and Sheerness. The Rochdale Report contains a brief reference to these in paragraph 256, which I think goes hardly far enough. However, as these services are concerned with safety, for which my right hon. Friend has some statutory responsibility, we think that they are a matter which concerns the Government directly, rather than the Council.
There can be no doubt that more use should be made of carefully plotted and filtered radar information, covering the approaches to busy ports. At times of poor visibility such information—if acted upon—can be a tremendous aid to safety. Far too many collisions and strandings still occur when vessels are entering or leaving harbour. In addition, the serious delays which can still occur when traffic is halted by fog are capable of being eliminated. However if full advantage is to be taken of shore radar stations, it is necessary that all vessels under way in low visibility should be able to communicate with them, or else wait in anchorages which are clear of the normal shipping channels.
It is also necessary that harbour authorities should have sufficient control over the movements and routes of vessels entering or leaving to ensure safety. As I said when addressing the Dock and Harbour Authorities' Association earlier this year, we hope to include two or three enabling Clauses in the Bill to provide the necessary powers.
This brings me to the nature of the Measure which we intend to lay before Parliament. As my right hon. Friend said, it will make statutory provision for

the National Ports Council and define its powers and duties. It will also contain financial provisions enabling my right hon. Friend to control major harbour developments. It will also be necessary for my right hon. Friend to have powers to amend by Order much of the existing legislation concerning ports. Unless this can be done, reforms as far-reaching as those which we have been discussing would take up an inordinate amount of parliamentary time.
Several hon. Members, including hon. Members on the Opposition Front Bench, have asked what safeguards we visualise to ensure that Parliament is given the opportunity to discuss changes which are bound to be to some extent controversial. I can assure the House that this is very much in our minds. I would rather not give an undertaking that all such orders will be subject to affirmative Resolution, because the degree of public interest will vary widely with the nature of the Order. It is one thing, for example, to alter the constitution of a particular harbour board, or to vary a little bit the limits of the jurisdiction of a particular harbour board. It is quite another thing to amalgamate a group of authorities, possibly against the wishes of one of them. We shall, therefore, endeavour to establish machinery appropriate to varying circumstances, and we shall listen attentively to the views of the hon. Members when these matters fall to be discussed in detail, presumably during the Committee stage of the Bill.
We shall also pay close attention to what has been said in the debate today. I should like to repeat what my right hon. Friend said at the beginning of the debate. Our sole object is to promote efficiency in British ports and to provide for their expansion. In this task we shall do our best to resist the intrusion alike of party politics, of doctrinaire theorising, and of vested interests opposed to change. To this end we look to the co-operation and to the help of all people concerned both inside Parliament and outside, without regard to their party or their present employment or to any preconceived ideas.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House welcomes the statement made by Her Majesty's Government on Wednesday, 6th March, 1963. on the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Major Ports of Great Britain (Command Paper No. 1824).

STATUTE LAW REVISION BILL [Lords]

Read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Peel]

Committee Tomorrow.

LAW REFORM (SUCCESSION, ETC.) (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Bill referred to the Scottish Grand Committee.—[Lady Tweedsmuir.]

ROYAL NAVY (REPLACEMENT PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question proposed.

That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Peel]

9.59 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Wall: The fact that this is the third Adjournment debate on the Royal Navy since we debated the Navy Estimates shows that 1963 has been a memorable year for the senior Service. There has been the decision to build the Polaris submarines, there has been the commissioning of our first nuclear-propelled submarine"Dreadnought", and I hope that very soon there will be an announcement of the aircraft carrier replacement programme—

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Peel.]

Mr. Wall: Those events, and the start of building of two assault ships constitute a record of which any Government can be proud, but I hope to show that this record is not yet enough.
Dealing, first, with Polaris, I share with most hon. Members a belief in an independent nuclear deterrent, and I be leave that the best method of delivering it is by submarine rather than by aircraft. I wonder whether four of these vessels are enough, but I shall not dwell on that as it has been debated time and time again in defence debates. I will only repeat that there is a danger that if we do not take the cost of the delivery of

the deterrent out of the Service Estimates we will unbalance those Estimates, and I again plead that whatever means the Government of the day choose to deliver the deterrent, the cost of delivery shall be borne on the Vote of the Ministry of Defence and not on that of one of the Services. I also hope that the Minister will ensure that the construction of Polaris submarines will not unbalance our manning position particularly in certain specialist categories.
The real essence of the debate concerns aircraft carriers. In the Adjournment debate on 15th May last, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Commander Courtney) pleaded for the introduction or completion of a surface-to-surface weapon system. In reply to that debate, the Civil Lord virtually said that he accepted that surface-to-surface missiles were necessary, but that, as a country, we could not afford those and the aircraft carriers. He went on to say that in many respects the aircraft carrier was superior to the surface missile system; it was more flexible; from the carrier one could reconnoitre, one could get early warning, one could instigate air defence and strikes in support of amphibious operations; one could strike at inland targets, and locate and identify enemy targets, many of which things could not be done by the surface-to-surface missile.
If that is true, and there is much in the suggestion, it shows how vital the aircraft carrier is in conventional warfare. In nuclear warfare we depend on the deterrent, or rather perhaps I should say that if we have to use the nuclear weapon the deterrent has failed. I believe that conventional warfare is far more likely than nuclear warfare. That means that the hinge of the Fleet is the aircraft carrier. We have four, or, perhaps, five of these ships—"Eagle","Ark Royal","Hermes","Victorious" and"Centaur"—although I hope that"Centaur" will soon be converted to a commando carrier.
The House must face the fact that in the world of today our communications are threatened in many places and, in particular, in the Persian Gulf area—and the House knows how important the oil of Kuwait is to this country—and South-East Asia, where we are committed not only to S.E.A.T.O., but


to our Commonwealth partner, Greater Malaysia, which is to be formed in a few days' time. These are positive threats. Is my hon. Friend satisfied that that Royal Navy could protect us against them because, in these cases, operations might have to be undertaken outside the range of land-based aircraft? Is he satisfied that the four carriers in commission and the one in reserve could tackle those threats, not one at a time but, if necessary, both together?
My hon. Friend will realise that the commando carrier is useless unless it is supported by a conventional carrier carrying fixed-wing aircraft. I suggest, therefore, that there is a need for a conventional carrier carrying fixed-wing aircraft in the Gulf, the need for another in South-East Asia, and the need for a third, moving as reserve or support between these stations in an emergency. There is need for one at least in our commitment to N.A.T.O. and for trade defence elsewhere. In addition, I think that, certainly in times of stress or war, there is need for at least two refitting or repairing.
That gives us a minimum of six. Today, we have only five. The"Victorious" will probably fall to pieces by the 1970s. If the carrier programme is not started next year and a decision is not taken this year, I believe that the security of this country is—I put it strongly—gravely and seriously in danger. I do not believe that we can carry out our proper concept of maritime strategy and protect not only our own trade routes, but the Commonwealth countries that depend on us, unless we have six modern fixed-wing aircraft carriers.
I think that the House will recall that we have heard the expression"task force" in a number of Defence White Papers. We heard"task force" mentioned in the Adjournment debate on 15th May. The old post-war concept of a task force was a carrier acting as a strike weapon supported or protected by a battleship or cruiser for anti-aircraft defence together with the necessary escort forces.
I suggest that the new concept of a task force is an amphibious task force again based on the conventional carrier and the commando carrier. If this amphibious task force is to be effective, it must have at least one assault ship

and I suggest that it must have adequate air protection, presumably by the new guided missile destroyers and it must also have a headquarter's ship.
Could we not consider adapting our existing cruisers so that they can also act as headquarter ships in amphibious or naval operations? If these ships have to be replaced, as they must be replaced, the"Belfast" will have to be replaced very soon, could she not be replaced by a dual-purpose ship such as the U.S.S."Northampton".
Then what about the assault ships themselves? Their basic function is to land armour. This armour will be landed from these brand new vessels"Fearless" and"Intrepid" in L.CM. (9) a modification of the old L.C.H.S used in the last war. The assault vessels, for defensive reasons, have to anchor 5, 6 or 10 miles off the beaches and armour is then landed in a slow and vulnerable landing craft. Surely here is a rôle for the hovercraft. I hope that my hon. Friend will look into this and consider whether the Royal Marines and others who develop our amphibious strategy are given adequate facilities to develop this new British invention which would be so vitally important in supporting amphibious operations.
The first infantry goes in in helicopters, but those aircraft will not be able to carry tanks for some time, but the hovercraft will and are faster and might be able to achieve surprise. I do not believe that enough has been done in developing hovercraft for this form of maritime operation and I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to say something about it.
Then there is the question of what happens until"Intrepid" and"Fearless" are completed. We have I believe two liners which have just been taken off trooping and are no longer needed for trooping, which is now done by air. Has the Admiralty given some consideration to retaining one of these ships as an emergency infantry landing ship until the assault ships come forward and perhaps even then as a follow up for those ships?
I turn from amphibious operations briefly to my final point, and that is trade defence. I think that we all agree that our present destroyers and frigates are good. We all recognise that hunter-killer submarines are essential and that


probably the only method of killing a nuclear submarine is by another nuclear submarine. I know that some of my hon. Friends are worried by the fact that the programme of hunter-killers had to be interrupted in order to start on the Polaris submarine programme.
But there are other things we can do. Trade defence is spread too thinly. I have suggested that the minimum number of carriers that we require is six, and that will not leave very many for trade protection. We need to develop 10,000 to 12,000-ton ships to carry helicopters which would be available for trade protection and, in emergency, could be used to support a commando carrier in amphibious tasks. There is a French vessel of 12,000 tons which is a good prototype of the ship I am thinking about.
During the last war we equipped merchant ships with 6 in. and 3 in. guns as well as smaller anti-aircraft guns. Might not consideration be given to seeing that merchant ships are now able to be fitted with platforms to operate helicopters? Would not this be the best protection for fast merchant ships not in convoys in a future war and could not they be operated by the R.N.R.? Are arrangements being made for this? My hon. Friend will see the line of thought I am following. We should do more to spread our limited trade defence and should make use of the R.N.R.
On the subject of helicopters, has my hon. Friend noted the article in the Daily Telegraph today which refers to the Wessex which is the only aircraft which makes the commando carrier concept possible at all, because the old Whirlwind helicopter has a ridiculously small capacity for carrying troops? This article states that there have been snags with the Wessex and that there is something wrong with this helicopter on which so much depends. It implies that there has been trouble with the engines and the Fleet Air Arm has not been allowed to fly the helicopter over sea because of certain defects. I hope that this is wildly exaggerated. I am sorry that I did not give my hon. Friend more warning about this. If he cannot reply today I hope that he will look into the matter, and that if the report is wrong he will take the opportunity, perhaps at Question Time, to say so. It is of interest to the House, because so much depends upon this aircraft.
I believe that conventional war is more likely than nuclear though we hope not to have either. Certainly, as far as the Navy is concerned, conventional war is the real threat. As for nuclear war, we offset the cost of Polaris with the fading out of Bomber Command and if we take the cost of the delivery of the deterrent and keep it separate it does not matter which Service actually delivers it.
In conventional war, the main role of the Navy, it seems that the carrier is absolutely vital. I think that my hon. Friend in the last Adjournment debate on this matter made that perfectly plain when he was winding up. I hope, therefore, that he will agree that six is the minimum we want today. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that it is essential to start a planned replacement programme this year. In other words, it must be announced and the arrangements made this year.
I hope that he will agree also that we need two balanced amphibious task forces. I hope that he will give consideration to the question of control and command cruisers and of hovercraft for landing assault armour and will consider carefully what we can do to spread our limited resources over the whole of trade defence by using our wonderful Merchant Navy and by using the R.N.R.
My hon. Friend may say that this is all very well and that there are not enough resources to achieve it and the main difficulty is cost. I do not think that this is a correct argument. I hope that he will press the Treasury, show that we are threatened in certain parts of the world, that we could be defeated in the Persian Gulf and could lose much of our oil supply and could find ourselves at the same time in a very difficult position in South-East Asia. That would be far more costly to the country and the Treasury than a planned replacement programme for naval construction starting this year.

10.15 p.m.

The Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. John Hay): I am obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) for initiating this Adjournment debate and giving thereby one more example, if it were needed, of the very considerable interest that he rightly takes in the affairs of the Royal Navy and of


the jealous way he challenges anything which could be even remotely interpreted as prejudicing the ability of the Navy to carry out its rôles in defence of the free world. On this occasion his main points have related to the need for an adequate naval replacement programme and he has brought forward a number of telling arguments in support of his case.
My hon. Friend, I hope, will forgive me if I do not, in the time available to me, answer each and every single point, of which there were quite a number, but I assure him that I will look very carefully at everything that he has said tonight.
The House is, of course, very well aware that it is the declared policy of Her Majesty's Government to provide the Fleet with modern versatile ships fitted with the most advanced equipment. As my noble Friend the First Lord stated in the Memorandum which accompanied the Statement on Defence this year, the past 12 months have seen a striking advance in the fulfilment of this policy. Ships, aircraft and weapons which are entirely novel to the Royal Navy have come into service, and others will be accepted into service during the current year. The House may like to know that we shall be spending substantially more on the shipbuilding programme than we did last year. We are, in fact, increasing the amount by £5½ million to a total of £63½ million.
All who take an interest in these matters know very well that modern ships with their more sophisticated equipment cost more to equip, to run and maintain, and it is of paramount importance that we should plan the future Navy bearing in mind the limited resources that we have for defence, the variety of rôles that the Navy will be called upon to carry out and the need to create a balanced force with which all these various rôles can be adequately carried out within the fixed limits which have been decided. We have to keep pace with all the latest technological advances, and in some of them I think we can justly claim that we are leading the way, but we must do so without making each ship so expensive that the total numbers of ships that we can afford are inadequate to the task.
My hon. Friend has drawn particular attention to the balance of the Fleet,

and perhaps I should say a word about that and also on the question of the limitation of our resources. Unfortunately, we have not got the resources to make it possible to have all the ships and all the equipment that many of us would like to have. We have to strike, so far as we can, the right sort of balance between ships on the one hand and aircraft on the other, between one class of ship and others, so that we can comply with our various commitments in collaboration with our allies. Also we have to get the best value from our ships that we can for the money that we spend on them. I think the balance that we have got now is just about right.
There has been no remarkable reduction in the number of ships, either operational or on trials or training, in the last few years, but the Fleet has now a much higher content of modern ships which are infinitely superior to their predecessors. For example, H.M. ships"Devonshire" and"Hampshire", the first two of six County Class 6,000-ton destroyers armed with the Seaslug missile, have now been commissioned. I had the opportunity the other day of visiting H.M.S."Hampshire" and was enormously impressed with what I saw. Two of their sister-ships,"Kent" and"London", are expected to join the Fleet this year and we are making good progress with the building of H.M. ships"Fife" and"Glamorgan". Short-range anti-aircraft missiles also became operational with the Fleet with the Seacat system, in service first in the"Devonshire" and the"Hampshire" and in the four Battle class aircraft direction pickets.
The Royal Navy has pioneered the very advanced steam propulsion with gas turbine boost machinery which has been introduced in the Tribal class frigate. Moreover, many of the older ships have been or are being modernised and fitted with the most up-to-date equipment. For example, H.M.S."Eagle", which will fly the Buccaneer aircraft, is being fitted with modern methods of processing and displaying action information and will have the latest accommodation standards for the crew.
We can say that the Fleet today is more modern than it has been for a long time and, in the years to come, it will keep ahead of developments.
Now, a word about the problem on which my hon. Friend touched, the question of the nuclear hunter-killer submarine programe. The House may be interested to have some details of how we are getting on with this. H.M.S."Dreadnought" was accepted from the builders on 23rd April last, and, following a series of trials, she should become fully operational next year."Valiant" was not laid down until this year but it is now well advanced. Fabrication of components has already started for the third nuclear-propelled hunter-killer submarine. After this, because of the Polaris programme, there will be a temporary suspension in the programme of new building of nuclear hunter-killers. How long the suspension will last will depend on a number of factors, but we intend to keep it to a minimum. Of course, we shall review the rate of production from time to time.
I am aware that there is concern in the House and the country that decisions about the nuclear deterrent should not prejudice the conventional Navy and, in particular, the new construction programmes. My hon. Friend made this point. I have already mentioned our intention of making good the temporary suspension in submarine building, but I remind the House also that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence assured hon. Members on 4th March last that the Nassau Agreement did not jeopardise the Navy's chance of getting conventional ships. He was at pains to explain that the defence budget has to be considered as a whole and that Naval decisions have to be taken on their merits, not according to which particular Service happens to be charged with the duty of carrying the deterrent. There has been no decision to contribute to a N.A.T.O. surface force nor an how much we should contribute if we did.
The main subject of my hon. Friend's remarks was die replacement of aircraft carriers and, in particular, the replacement of the"Victorious" when she completes her useful life in 1971. This has been the subject of several Parliamentary Questions recently, and I, as a comparative newcomer, have been left in no doubt whatever of the views of hon. Members about it.
We have already explained that design work on a replacement is in hand, and we are giving a great deal of thought to the

proper timing of the programme. In these days, when shore-based facilities are steadily diminishing, there is little doubt that aircraft carriers provide the most politically secure, unobtrusive and self-contained bases for the deployment of military power. They can and they do operate in areas far beyond the reach of fixed bases ashore. Not only can they be used to support amphibious forces on passage and during a landing but they also provide a platform for our airborne early warning surveillance and for surface strike and anti-submarine aircraft to protect our merchant fleet and other interests throughout the world against the threat from the air, from surface forces and from submarines.
My hon. Friend feels that we need a minimum of six carriers, two to support amphibious task forces east of Suez, the others to contribute to N.A.T.O., to operate with the Home and Mediterranean Fleets, for general trade protection, with, of course, a reserve always undergoing refit. As we announced in the Statement on Defence, there will in future be two carriers east of Suez at all times. I do not quarrel with the other commitments which my hon. Friend stated, but we have for some years had to meet these requirements—and all of them do not usually coincide—with four operational ships. This is a very difficult task and an arduous one for the ships' companies concerned, and I feel sure that hon. Members would wish to join me in a tribute to the work done by the ships' companies under very difficult conditions.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Mr. Hay: Somehow, despite our handicaps, we have managed to fulfil this rôle and task and I hope that we shall continue to do so.
Perhaps my hon. Friend will not press me further on the issue of carriers tonight. I have said all that I think I can at this stage to make it clear that we take the matter extremely seriously, and I hope that we shall be able to come to a conclusion on it fairly soon.

Mr. Wall: Is that likely to be before the Summer Recess?

Mr. Hay: I have been warned since coming to my present office that I should not speculate too freely on these matters.


Perhaps my hon. Friend will have the same patience that I am trying to show.
May I now say a word or two about amphibious forces to which my hon. Friend referred. His point was, I think, that we should have two amphibious task forces, one based on either side of the Indian Ocean. We are alive to the importance of amphibious forces. As I say, there are two carriers east of Suez. From 1964 there will normally be two commando ships there as well, and the two assault ships"Fearless" and"Intrepid", as soon as they are in commission, will also be based there. We do not plan to provide headquarters ships, but the assault ships and cruisers have a command capability, and, of course, minesweepers, escorts and afloat support ships are deployed in general support. We have a large building programme for faster and better-equipped support ships.
My hon. Friend returned to a point which he has raised before in the House, namely, that we should have small support carriers somewhat on the lines of the French"La Resolue". I am advised that such a ship of about 13,000 tons would not be large enough to operate fixed-wing aircraft in support of a landing. This type of ship is really a helicopter and commando carrier. We already have two ships with a far greater capacity to carry helicopters—that is, around 20 per ship—and also commandos, carrying over 800 men compared with the 700 carried by"La Resolue".
We have adequate bombardment capability for the support of a landing in the Tiger class cruisers. One of the twin 6-in. gun turrets in the Tiger class cruisers is more than equivalent in rate of fire and weight of shell to the medium artillery normally deployed in support of a brigade group. There is also bombardment capability in other conventional ships. But we are interested in the idea of carrying helicopters in ships which could combine the special characteristics of the cruiser with those of the helicopter carrier. This is a concept to which we are giving very careful thought in our future planning.

Captain John Litchfield: Will my hon. Friend confirm that it is the view of the Board of Admiralty that there should be a carrier replacement programme?

Mr. Hay: I stated as clearly as I could in my earlier remarks what our general thinking is on this matter. A great many factors have to be taken into account and the Board of Admiralty's view is one of them. As far as we are concerned, we will try to come to a conclusion in the light of all these factors as quickly as possible.
I should like to say a few words about Hovercraft. A few months ago we announced that the SRN3 was to be built by Saunders Roe. This is really a research craft. We are well alive to the potentiality of Hovercraft for anti-submarine work. There may equally be some kind of application for amphibious operations. We shall therefore watch with the greatest interest the development of the SRN3project.
May I say a word or two about the Wessex helicopter. I saw the report in the Daily Telegraph to which my hon. Friend referred. I am advised that virtually everything in that report this morning was wildly inaccurate. I regret having to say that for I have a great respect for the Daily Telegraph and its accuracy. However, I think that some of the people to whom the reporter was speaking must have been pulling his leg.
In conclusion, so long as the present strategy and defence commitments of the United Kingdom remain unchanged, we envisage that we shall continue to require an effective strength not less than we now deploy in the operational fleets. Our present plans are to replace ships as necessary, and for each new generation we shall consider the latest development in naval construction, machinery, weapons and other equipment, and we have every intention that our ships shall remain, as they are today, among the finest and most efficient in the world.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock